RotLD: Chronicles of the Black Lands

by Totem Of Storms

Return of the Last Defender is a story started by a friend of mine describing the adventures and misadventures of various Megaman X characters who find themselves in Mega Tokyo 2033. This is set after the initial arc, which may be uploaded soon.

Tim Hodgkiss

Chronicles of the Black Lands

Page 142 of 142

Chronicles of the Black Lands

Prologue – Dream Sequence

Kyle Reeves glanced around himself, feeling certain for once that he really was dreaming.

All around him was a landscape, desolate, with occasional dead bushes and weeds sticking up out of it. The ground itself was an odd collection of sand, bone-dry soil, mud, rock and gravel. It took a minute for it to register, but he eventually realised what had been troubling him.

The ground around him was well lit, not uncomfortably bright, but just right. But there weren't any shadows.

Glancing up, he tried to see past what he had taken to be a dark cloudbank around the horizon. Then he realised what else had been troubling him. From one horizon to the other, the sky was totally black. Not simply the black that can be achieved on a cloudy night, but a deep darkness without stars, sun or even a slight lightening to show that it really was clouds with a bit of light creeping through.

'And that was odd' the Walrus said, 'cos' down here it's quite well lit', he misquoted to himself. "This cannot be real."

He glanced down at himself, finding that he was still dressed in his usual jeans, t-shirt and boots. Looking at his hands, he cupped them together so that there was only a small hole formed by one thumb and index finger. Holding the hole up to his eye he was surprised that instead of not being able to see anything, it was as easy to see what was in there as if he hadn't cupped them together.

He was about to look around a bit when there came a scream from behind him. This wasn't the scream of something that was simply afraid of something. This was the heart-felt scream of terror of someone that was genuinely afraid of dying very soon and in immense pain at the same time.

Though he'd never heard the owner of that scream actually scream, let alone sound even vaguely afraid, he knew who was in pain.

"MATRIX!"

At the same time that he started running, Kyle activated his armour, feeling the blue metal materialise around him as he started up a dune. Sensors tried to make sense of what was going on round him as he cleared the top of it and saw a scene from hell.

The Timeforcer known as Neo Paradox was indeed there. So were quite a lot of other creatures. Off in the distance he could see someone that looked a lot like himself, fighting alongside Shades, X, Zero and Trigger. Beside them someone else stood, in armour similar to their own, though golden rather than red or blue.

The creatures were odd, hideous even. Most were totally inhuman and different from each other, having different numbers of limbs, mouths heads and goodness only knew what else. They varied in size and colour as well, some being the size of dogs while others were the size of houses.

One of the largest, with dozens of grey, segmented tentacles coming out of its body, had somehow managed to impale Neo on several of the sharp ends of the tentacles. One of them was going right through his belly, coming out of his back. Neo's hair was blonde and sticking out at all angles with sparks crackling off the tips while his eyes were glowing bright red as he drew on his power.

"MATRIX!"

Neo screamed again, unleashing huge blasts of energy at his attacker before whipping himself around to face Kyle. "Kyle!" Matrix held his hand out towards him as if he wanted Kyle to pull him free.

But before he could move, Kyle felt Neo's power slide right through his defences and into his mind. Forgive me for doing this Kyle, but I don't have a choice.

I'll try to explain while I have the strength left. I can't maintain this contact across Time, Space and the Multiverse for much longer though. I'll give you a set of numbers. They're gravity well calculations. Get the rest of the Maverick Hunters together and crossover as soon as possible. You'll meet up with Jack Tomlinson, he'll explain things.

You need to go soon.

In the instant that this took place Kyle also felt Neo dump a series of numbers into his mind.

Then Neo screamed again and seemed to explode.

"Kyle!"

Kyle screamed himself as he woke, finding Linna almost on top of him, shaking him.

"What happened to you?" she asked as he got up and tried to stop himself from hyperventilating. He could hear his pulse going like a drum-roll and as he tried to pick himself up from the bed, he almost slipped over again from the sweat on his palm.

"It was Matrix. He was in trouble," he explained breathlessly.

"You had a bad dream," she told him.

"No I didn't," he said. He could still hear Neo's numbers pounding round his mind in time with his pulse. It was getting hard to think with that going on. "I think he was trying to warn me about something."

"How can Matrix be in trouble? He's indestructible." Linna pushed Kyle down onto the bed again as she spoke.

"That's the thing, he is. But somehow something had him in real pain. From the way he went off at the end, I think he might have actually died."

"Indestructible means that he can't die."

"Only a perfect defence is indestructible and nothing is perfect. Where he was didn't seem to be right. It was as light as day but the light wasn't coming from anywhere, it was simply there. Maybe rules work differently there and someone used that to find a weakness in him."

Linna looked at him with concern in her eye. "If someone could defeat him…"

"When I was there I saw me in the background. That probably means he was contacting me from some point in the future. That means that you can't stop me because in some way, I've already gone." Kyle pulled himself off the bed, trying to remember how Linna had ended up there with him. He wasn't quite sure, though it might have had something to do with the party.

Catching sight of himself in the mirror, Kyle regretted looking. He was a mess, with his hair sticking at all angles. He also noticed that he had nothing on.

"Call the other Maverick Hunters," he said. "I'm gonna catch a shower and get dressed.

"We're going to crossover tomorrow morning."

Chapter 1 – Journey Begins

"You sure he's not nuts," X asked Linna as the pair of them watched Kyle wolf down some breakfast.

As a former leader of the 17th Maverick Hunter unit, X was experienced in people questioning his authority. But most of the time he didn't question Kyle's leadership. This time though he wasn't so sure.

"He's sure of what he saw," Linna said. "Or he thinks he is. What worries me is that he's probably going to get himself killed trying to take on an enemy that managed to nearly kill Neo Paradox."

X shrugged. The few times he'd met Neo he'd been impressed by the Timeforcer's strength. From what little he'd heard of Kyle's dream, he was starting to think that it wasn't actually Neo that had been in it. "I suspect that Kyle will be leaving regardless of whether we go with him or not. At least with us and the knowledge of that situation he might stand a better chance than alone."

Across the room Kyle pushed away his plate and got up, looking around hurriedly as he did. "Everyone here?"

X glanced around the room. Zero was in one corner, playing Scissor, Paper, Stone with Adam. Kieran was at this moment coming out of the kitchen, having finished his breakfast a couple of minutes ago.

"Great, everyone is," Kyle said as he grabbed a chair and spun it round so that he could sit on it the wrong way round while facing them. "I hope you understand what is going on."

Zero glanced at him. "From what I understand you just had a bad dream and you're trying to justify getting worked up about it."

X covered his eyes and shook his head. The trouble was that for once Zero didn't seem to be being funny for once, meaning that he really believed what he'd said.

"Fine then you can stay behind," Kyle said simply. "I don't have time to wait around. Matrix said we needed to go through as soon as possible and I intend to do just that, with or without you."

X looked around the room, trying to judge the other's reactions. Kieran seemed to be taking his brother seriously, or at least was acting as if he was. Adam didn't seem to know what to do, though would probably go along just in case. Linna looked determined as well, though a bit sceptical.

"When are you leaving," X asked slowly.

In answer Kyle picked up a bag from beside the table and slung it onto his back. "I'm heading out now. I'll wait for anyone that's coming to get their stuff together, but no longer."

X nodded understandingly. "I'm with you." He picked up the bag that he'd dumped near his feet. "I guessed that you'd be leaving soon."

Kieran indicated the bag near his feet as well. "I guessed the same. I just hope we're not going for long."

Adam glanced around and shrugged. "I'll be coming I suppose. Like Kieran said, I hope we're not gone for too long."

"I'm coming too," Linna said.

"Fine," Kyle said. "What about you Zero?"

Zero looked around the room as if seeking support. "I think you are nuts." He sighed. "With Linna gone the Knight Sabres are going to have a hard time if anything happens. I guess I'll stay in case anything does."

Kyle nodded, seeming to hide something as he did. I wish he wouldn't do that, X thought. If he has something to say why can't he just say it instead of hiding?

Kyle looked around at his group of friends as they arranged themselves in the alley. They were all in armour and all except Zero had a rucksack with their equipment in it. Linna had her Hardsuit on with a power pack and teleport equipment that Kyle had rigged up so that she could join them.

"Well, I guess we'll see you soon," Kyle said to him as he shook hands with the Maverick Hunter.

"If you survive," Zero joked.

Kyle looked him straight in the eye. "If we die, you'll have the pleasure of knowing that I was right and something was wrong."

Zero rolled his eyes. "Emotional blackmail?"

"I had to try," Kyle said. He turned to everyone else. "OK, let's start charging up."

Everyone began charging up to full power, as Kyle dumped the numbers running through his head into the gravity well generator. As he aimed it and the generator began its power build-up, he heard something overhead.

Momentarily distracted, he glanced up to see a number of Military Boomers hovering over them. Unable to de-power the gravity well generator, Kyle began to pour more power into it, hoping that Zero could hold off the Boomers until they'd left without them.

Unfortunately it seemed that he hadn't explained the mechanics of the crossover technique properly to Linna. She stopped charging up the power pack they'd rigged for her and began firing Electro-daggers into the air. At the same time Zero began charging up his Z-Buster, apparently hoping to take out the Boomers.

"Bugger!" Kyle shouted as the generator reached peak power and safety cutout cut in and the thing discharged, dumping everyone into transit.

As they came out of transit, Kyle tried to keep himself under control and manage a proper landing for once. Unfortunately this version of Mega Tokyo went in for odd decorations.

In the middle of his flip to try and land on his feet, Kyle Reeves found himself flung backwards into what felt like a lamppost. His armour protected him from the worst of the impact, though he wasn't quite sure what damage he might have incurred if he hadn't actually managed to leave transit before running into the post.

Sliding down it, he landed on his head, and then fell onto his front. Cursing to himself, he got up and looked around.

The area they were in didn't look that different from where they had been except for the large silvery metal post that he'd hit. There were almost a dozen of them in a circle around the group of Maverick Hunters.

As Kyle deactivated his armour, shunting it into storage, he looked at his friends. He was slightly surprised when he found that Linna was missing. Then again she wasn't charging when we entered transit. But hang on: Zero was.

And indeed the blonde haired Maverick Hunter was picking himself up off the floor next to X, having apparently hit one of the posts as well. In fact it looked like they had all hit the posts.

"Nice aim Xtreme," His brother said. The visor covering his eyes hid most of his expression though the twist to his mouth spoke of a bit of annoyance. "Couldn't you land us anywhere better than a giant birdcage?"

Xtreme looked around again.

It was indeed a giant birdcage, with the metal posts, too close together to squeeze through, going straight up until they curved over and met at the top. Xtreme was confused about what this was for, until he saw that Trigger had landed with his face in a pile of different types of animal food. Almost half way up there was a platform, presumably with bird food on it.

"This isn't a cage," Xtreme said. "It's a bird feeder." When he took in their expressions, he shrugged. "It's an alternate universe: who said they had to do everything the same way we do?"

"This sure doesn't look like the place you described," Shades said.

"Yeah, I thought that place didn't have a Sun," Trigger pointed upward at the bright glowing object in the sky that, since it was in the right sort of place, would probably have to be called a Sun, apparently just about to set. Either the jump had taken longer than they'd expected or a major difference between this universe and their own was that this universe was twelve hours ahead of their own.

"Dunno," Kyle said. "I'm sure I got those numbers right but maybe Linna dropping out and Zero coming in threw us off course."

"Great so it's my fault," Zero said as he turned to examine the bars of their prison. "So d'ya want to jump us back to our own universe now or not cos' I sure as hell want to get back. We did leave Linna in a bit of trouble you know."

Kyle nodded, and began to input the equations for their return trip. Then the whole thing went to hell.

Trigger was still picking bits of what he guessed was dog-food off his face when at the end of the alley there came the sound of a huge explosion accompanied by the noise of what sounded like an X-Buster in rapid-fire mode.

"On the other hand we seem to have trouble of our own here," Shades mentioned, unveiling his X-Buster and readying it. "Think we should at least take a look?"

"Random dream sequences I can't cope with," Zero said. "Fellow Maverick Hunters in distress I can understand." In a sudden movement he activated his Z-Sabre and sliced through the bars of the cage nearest to the noise. In another he had made another cut and the bars collapsed to reveal a hole. "Let's kick butt!"

All of them activated their armour at once and started running down the alley. As they cleared the end of it, Xtreme swore.

"Bloody Hell! Those look like the things from my dream."

And indeed the three creatures that were staggering down the middle of the street did look something like those from his dream. They were all humanoid, with two arms and legs, though they themselves came up to almost twenty metres tall. There much of the resemblance stopped apart from the few rags that they seemed to have dragged together to cover bits of themselves.

One of the creatures was green skinned and seemed to have two heads. One of them was mostly eyeball while the other was mostly mouth. On the ends of its arms, huge claws covered what seemed to be some kind of energy weapons.

The second and third were a bit more similar in general design. They both had huge numbers of metre long spines and spikes covering them, no visible head, though a lump at about waist height seemed to have an eye somewhere in it. One of their chests revealed a gapping mouth with a series of sharp teeth in it and some kind of long tongue that seemed to be closer to a tentacle than anything. The other had a toothless maw from which issued a faint wisp of smoke. The one with the tongue was blue oddly while the other was green.

"You saw those things in a dream?" Shades seemed to be amazed at Xtreme. "If I'd seen those I'd have died of fright!"

"Fellow Maverick Hunter spotted," Zero said, indicating a direction with his active Z-Sabre.

Off to one side was the source of the X-Buster type shots that had been hitting the creatures. In terms of design its armour was some kind of cross between Shades' and Zero's, with the visor covering his eyes and a series of fins coming back off the helmet. Unlike theirs though, his armour was gold with red and black markings.

Xtreme evidently had gotten over his shock and decided to take charge. "Everyone drop your gear here. Zero, X, clear the civilians out of the way. Shades, Trigger, let's go and help our friend over there."

Trigger nodded and activated his T-Buster, slipping his rucksack off his back as he did. Bringing it up to full charge, he unleashed a huge burst of energy at the first of the creatures while Shades and Xtreme did the same with the others.

The creature didn't seem to be too bothered by the blast that hit it. It staggered slightly and patted at itself to put out some of the minor fires that he'd started, then levelled one of its arms in his direction.

Trigger managed to leap out of the way to avoid the shot, though wasn't quite ready for the sheer power of it. The explosion the energy blast caused was stronger than anything he'd expected and he was flung further into the air. When he landed again it was on his back, with the creature bringing its claws down at his chest.

"Shining Laser!" he yelled bringing up his left arm in a sharp chopping gesture. The glowing beam sliced off the claws from that hand, but simply reflected off the energy weapon hidden beneath them. Dodging his own weapon, Trigger rolled out of the way as the creature bellowed in pain.

Setting his T-Buster for rapid fire, he brought it round and aimed for the thing's eye-head. As he fired, its eye exploded, splattering the area with sticky fluid that set solid almost instantly. As the thing screamed from its other head, Trigger tried to move his foot, which was firmly glued to the tarmac. As the thing brought its other arm to bear on him, Trigger resorted to desperation tactics and turned his T-Buster on the ground around his foot, trusting that his armour would hold up to the force of the blast.

The rapid-fire shots blew the concrete to bits, fragments of it bouncing off his helmet. His left foot though was free, if still partially encased in solid gunk and tarmac. Diving out of the way, he activated his right foot's roller boot and kicked off hard to get moving.

The explosion sent him flying again, though with a degree of skill that a world champion would have been proud of, he flipped over and balanced himself on one set of wheels as he shot down the road.

Spinning himself around while relying on momentum to keep him heading the same way, he charged up his T-Buster for another full charge shot, this time aimed for the thing's other head.

As it turned to try and find him again, the shot went straight past its teeth and blew the back of its head open. As Trigger tripped himself up over a piece of rubble, he had the satisfaction of seeing the creature collapse, out of the fight at last.

Deactivating his armour and removing his foot from the block of gunk and tarmac, his foot taking up less room when not in armour, he tried to work out how everyone else was doing.

Looking around he decided that the phrase 'not bad, but could be a lot better' was probably one that could be brought out at this time. Xtreme was nowhere to be seen, though the other pair of creatures seemed to have been badly inconvenienced.

Xtreme took on the spiny green creature. Aiming for what he hoped was its head he hit it with a full charge shot. He didn't have a chance to see the results of this as the creature Trigger had attacked suddenly opened fire and knocked them all flying with a massive explosion.

Picking himself up, Xtreme looked up just in time to see the creature he'd attacked open its mouth and belch a huge fireball at him.

"Shit!" he shouted, then just dived out of the way so that while his head wasn't hit, most of the rest of him was.

External armour plating: 57% efficiency

Repair systems operational…

Scrambling to his feet, Xtreme turned and Wall Dashed his way up the nearest building, shooting off the top of the wall, flipping over and landing on the roof. Turning sharply, the tactical computer in his mind suddenly picked up a thought from the scientist in him.

If it can shoot fireballs, then it must have something flammable in it to create them.

"Burn baby!" He aimed a series of rapid-fire shots down its throat as it opened its mouth to fire off another shot.

The result was worse than he'd hoped for.

The thing managed to get the fireball out just in time and that exploded instead of the thing itself. The explosion seemed to simply anger it and it charged at him, leaping at the roof that he was standing on.

Jumping, Xtreme Air-Dashed across to the building on the far side of the street. Landing and turning, he found that the creature was a lot faster than he'd given it credit for and was already climbing up the wall beneath him.

As it came up level with him, he brought his X-Buster round and fired a medium charge shot down its throat.

A wall of fire burst out in front of him, smothering his view.

The last thing he saw for a while was a system readout.

External armour plating: 0% efficiency

Biological functions: 25% efficiency

Repair Systems: 75% efficiency

Repair systems operational…

Shades found himself up against the blue creature with the tongue. He managed to get a shot off at it, then was thrown aside just as Xtreme had been by the explosion from Trigger's friend.

Standing quickly, he turned to face his opponent just in time to see its tongue flick out and spear right through his left shoulder.

He screamed in pain and grabbed at the thing, trying to pull it out. Somehow he succeeded and collapsed to his knees. Looking up he tried to raise his X-Buster to fire at it before it could get back to him.

Unfortunately even as he looked up it was already attacking again. This time though something else got in the way.

The golden Reploid leapt up into the air nearby, arms outstretched, spinning like a top. From various parts of his body shots were coming out, hitting the thing's tongue, deflecting it so that Shades just had time to scrabble out of the way.

Bringing up a sensor report he was surprised to find that the thing's tongue was made of an unknown alloy, the same as its spines. His sensors couldn't penetrate its interior at all, let alone make sense of what he could see.

Dodging as the thing leapt at him, he Dashed up a pile of rubble then Air-Dashed twenty metres down the street.

There he found himself next to the golden Reploid.

"Who are you," the other called out.

"Call me Shades," Shades called back. "Who are you?"

"Eighty Four," was the reply he got to that. Before he could repeat the question, several parts of his ally's armour lit up and small, bullet-like energy bolts began coming out of them, hitting the creature's tongue as it tried to attack them again.

Apparently unable to deflect it this time, the person jumped, flipped and landed running, on the creature's tongue.

Like a high-speed tight-rope walker, the golden figure dashed up to its chest. Shade's view wasn't as good as he would have hoped, but he did manage to catch sight of a pair of blades that sprang from both of the figure's elbows.

As Shades dodged to one side, he managed to catch sight of the figure slash at the base of the thing's tongue. Despite being tough enough to go right through Titanium-X armour plating, the tongue wasn't strong enough to resist an attack from these blades that sliced right through it.

Going into something like a cartwheel, Shades landed a couple of metres away, turned and raised his X-Buster. Seeing that the creature seemed to have got over loosing its tongue and was simply trying to slash at the golden Reploid, the spines down its arm coming into full effect as they tore through rubble and the walls on either side of the road as the Reploid dodged away from it.

Before Shades could open fire, something red and yellow Air-Dashed out of nowhere, a Z-Sabre in its hands and a Maverick Hunter battle cry on its lips.

Zero ran straight into one of the creature's spines, impaling himself through the leg. Shades could see that he was obviously in pain, but rather than show it, Zero brought his Sabre round and drove it deep into the creature's shoulders, causing huge amounts of steam and super-heated flesh to explode outwards.

The creature screamed and staggered a bit, flailing at Zero with its arms before collapsing backwards and landing with a thump that set the buildings around them shaking.

Shades looked around, slightly amazed that they all seemed to have survived while all of the creatures were dead. Keeping a hand on his shoulder to try to staunch the flow of blood from the gaping wound, Shades stood and headed over to where Zero was still standing on the creature, his head hung, his chest moving as he tried to slow down his breathing to get it under control.

As Shades approached he realised why this was. From what he'd seen, Zero had only impaled himself the once, through the leg. Instead it now became apparent that he'd managed to impale himself through both legs and arms in his attempt to stab the creature.

Temporarily forgetting his own wound, Shades rushed over and began to carefully move the spines aside so that he could get at Zero and pull him out.

The golden Reploid showed up at his side suddenly, producing a blade from his elbow again and using it to cut away the spines so that they could get through. Rather than pull Zero off the spines though, he cut them off at the base and lifted the Reploid bodily out and carried him to the side of the road.

As they settled there, X and Trigger showed up, panting.

"How is he," Trigger asked.

"Pretty bad," The golden Reploid said. "We should probably get him back to my place soon."

Shades looked around. "Where's Xtreme?"

The rest of them looked around as well. Xtreme was indeed nowhere to be seen either way along the road, though with all of the rubble it was hard to tell.

"He was fighting that flame-thrower," X said. "It exploded and I haven't seen him since."

Activating his sensors, Shaded looked round then focused on the roof of one of the nearby buildings. "Oh bugger," he Wall-Dashed up to the roof and landed beside his brother, though it was hard to tell that it was Kyle.

His armour was almost totally gone, a few internal systems visible beneath the melted metal. His face was badly scarred from the heat, only just recognisable as Human to Kieran. "Help!"

X and the golden Reploid landed beside him. X seemed to be shocked at what had happened. "Is he alive?"

"Barely," the golden Reploid said. "Bring your friends up here. We'll go straight to my place. I might be able to treat him there, but not here."

Shades knelt next to Xtreme's slightly mangled form. X nodded. "I'll send Trigger to get our gear," he said as he jumped off the roof.

Xtreme's condition didn't seem to get any better or worse while they waited for the other pair to get back. X arrived first with Zero in his arms, trying to avoid impaling himself on the spines. Trigger had to make two trips up to the roof, finding himself unable to jump with everyone's bags on his back.

"What now?" Trigger laid their bags down in a pile as he spoke.

"We go to my place," the Reploid said.

"Where's that?"

"We'll teleport," the other replied.

"I can't teleport."

"Just grab hold of someone else," the Golden Reploid said, pressing a couple of buttons on his arm and laid a hand on Xtreme and Shades. "Everyone hold onto someone else."

"This isn't some kind of morale boosting thing is it?" Zero whispered as X picked up his friend again and grabbed hold of Trigger's shoulder.

Before they could speak, there was a flash and they all teleported.

Chapter 2 – A short rest

X was shocked at the fact that they were teleporting. He'd often wondered what it must be like when a Boomer fused with your armour and you found yourself unable to control it. Finding that someone could override his control over his teleporting systems and force him to do it, he guessed he knew.

It wasn't entirely pleasant to feel yourself do something, not because you wanted to but because someone overrode your control of your muscles before you could do something about it.

It felt a lot different from the usual teleport as well. It was over a lot sooner then usual and didn't actually feel of anything. If anything it was the lack of sensation that got to him. They ceased to be in one place and appeared in what looked like a bedroom/ living room combination.

As he looked around, slightly shocked, he realised that Trigger, Zero and Xtreme had been teleported with them, despite the fact that one wasn't able to and the other pair were in no state to use their teleporting systems.

The golden Reploid stood quickly, slipping his arms under Xtreme and lifting him carefully into the air. With Shades' help he carried him over to a sofa and laid him on it. What looked like medical monitoring equipment was on a shelf above the sofa and the Reploid pulled a set of leads from one piece and slotted one end of them into a dataport on Xtreme's arm. The other end he put in one of the pieces of equipment.

As he jabbed at one of the buttons, the thing started up and began to display various charts and graphs.

"Oh Carp," the Reploid said. "This guy's in trouble."

"What sort of trouble?" Shades seemed to be almost on the point of being sick with worry.

"Half his redundant backup systems are fried. Most of his standard systems are shot to bits and his auto-repair functions seem to have rerouted critical systems through non-essential backup systems." As he spoke the Reploid began to remove various components from the shelf and slot them together. "His bio-functions are down to about twenty percent and according to this his repair systems are down to about sixty percent efficiency. He has no motor functions, sensors or weapons right now and his life-support system is just about managing to keep itself going by running through his tactical system's backups."

"What can we do for him?" X came over and rested a hand on Xtreme's shoulder as he spoke.

"I'm going to link him up to some of the repair management and assistance systems that I sometimes use. I can also try upgrading his repair systems with some of my own so that he can do the work himself. Apart from that, all we can do for him is to hope." He slotted the apparently complete component into the same dataport that the leads were going into. On the screen the graphs flickered a bit then steadied at a slightly higher level than before.

"And as for your other friend," he said as he turned round to face Zero, "I think I might be able to do something."

Pulling a set of leads from the shelve, this time not attached to anything else, he jammed one end of them into his own dataport then the other one into the dataport on Zero's arm. X could see how close the spines had come to going straight through the dataport itself, which presumably would have mean that this wouldn't have worked.

The spines were still sticking through Zero's arms and legs and the Maverick Hunter was groaning, clearly in pain. The only good part was probably that his armour had sealed up around the spines, cutting off the blood flow so that he wasn't in danger of bleeding to death.

There was a slight pause while the golden Reploid fiddled with the connections at each end of the leads, then pressed something on his arm next to the dataport.

Both of them suddenly began to shimmer, as if the teleport system had started up then got stuck. As X watched, slightly amazed, the spines that were stuck through Zero's legs and arms faded out of sight, leaving four holes which sealed themselves up in a few seconds.

All of them were still staring in astonishment when both of them stopped shimmering, and started being solid again. Zero's eyes flickered open and he groaned, and then looked down at himself. "Bloody hell, where did the spikes go?"

The Reploid grinned beneath his visor. "I'll tell you later. For now you should get some rest." He rocked back on his heels and put a hand on his head. "And so could I. Think you can stagger to a sofa?"

Zero nodded and picked himself up, aided by Trigger. He just about managed to stagger over to the sofa on the opposite side of the room from the one Xtreme was on before he collapsed, angling himself for the sofa and coming out flat out on it.

"How's your shoulder," the Reploid asked Shades, indicating where he had an armoured hand on it.

"Still hurts like hell," Shades replied, taking his hand away.

As far as X could see, all that was wrong, or could be called wrong, was that there was a slight dent in his armour.

"That, hurts like hell?" Trigger seemed amused at the idea.

Shades was almost speechless. "I felt that thing go right through my shoulder."

The Reploid shook his head. "It didn't. Psychic sting."

"Oh, yeah, so it stung me did it?" Shades didn't sound amused.

"A Psychic sting is designed to intensify the pain caused by a weapon or attack. It might have felt like it went right through your shoulder, you might even have seen it go right in. But that was your mind interpreting what the sting was telling it."

"Yeah Kieran, its all in your mind," Trigger said sarcastically.

"Hey kid," the Reploid said. "Don't insult a Psychic sting. If I turned one on you, with a high enough power level, I could brush a feather across your chest, so lightly you wouldn't even feel it under normal circumstances. Only with the Psychic sting active, it would feel like I'd gone right through you with a pneumatic drill." He looked at Trigger, hard, apparently trying to see if he was taking it in and learning from it.

"What a day," the Reploid said, seemingly satisfied that the lesson had been learnt. As he did he stood up straight, head thrown back and arms stretched out straight at his sides. His armour glowed for an instant, then, when the glow had faded, it had vanished.

X found himself facing a Human male, probably mid-twenties, wearing black denim jeans, a plain grey t-shirt and dark trainers. His hair was an odd combination of brown and blonde, spiked up pretty badly so that parts of it were still flat. As he lowered his head, X saw that one of his eyes was grey, while the other was brown.

"I could do with a beer," he said. "How about you?"

It was good beer.

Kieran upended a can down his throat and reflected on one of the joys of your host being part owner of the local pub and living right next door to the pub.

Jack Tomlinson, as he introduced himself, was also a very good host, producing the beers in such an effective manner that Kieran almost forgot that they didn't actually know what the hell was going on round here or who he really was. They've even unbent enough to remove their armour, even X.

"So," he tried. "Who are you? And I don't mean your name."

They were all in the room next to that with the pair of wounded Reploids in it, the four of them spread across three sofas and a chair. Spare cans of beer were in a crate in the middle of the room. Jack was in the chair with his feet swung up onto the table and a couple of cans by the feet of his chair.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"Where did you get hold of Reploid armour or Merge Technology?"

Jack bit his bottom lip for a minute, considering. "The basic story of my life is that shortly after I was born, certainly before my first birthday, I was thrown through a dimensional portal to an alternate world. My armour wasn't originally part of me. It was sent through from the same universe and lay, inert, for years in a junkyard before, when I was on the run from some bullies, I tried hiding in the capsule that it was in.

"The next thing I remember after that was waking up, standing up in the middle of the junkyard with large parts of it in ruins. The armour had bonded with me and I worked out pretty quickly how to use its basic functions like the Merge technology so that I could hide it and the E-Buster."

"E-Buster?" Kieran knew that different Reploids had different names for their weapons, Trigger had the T-Buster for instance, but generally the first letter had something to do with the name or codename that someone came up with for themselves. "You called yourself 'Eighty Four' earlier…"

Jack nodded. "I chose the codename Eighty Four because that's the first two digits of the gravity well calculations that will get me back to the universe I originated from. Given that there are over twenty digits that follow that pair in the basic calculations and that pair are the only ones I know, that leaves an awful lot still to get right before I can go searching.

"So instead I spent most of my time following round the Black Lands instead of searching."

"Black Lands?" Kieran had the idea that they might be getting round to the serious information now.

"Don't you think we ought to wait for your friends to wake up?"

Kieran noticed the others looking at him. "No. If there's anything they need to know then we'll tell them it later. To put things bluntly though, Kyle had a dream that he is certain was a telepathic contact with a friend of ours. The setting for the contact was a weird landscape with a totally black sky, though everything was well lit despite this. There were a number of creatures around the area that were attacking a group that looked a lot like us lot and you, in armour."

Jack closed his eyes and grimaced. "Either your friend is very lucky or he really was having some kind of contact. That's a pretty good description of the Black Lands, though I would be interested in finding out who this person was that could start such a contact."

"Neo Paradox," Kieran said. When this didn't get a reaction he tried a different tack. "A Timeforcer…"

Jack shook his head. "I think Angelo might have mentioned something about the Timeforcers at one point. I know that he isn't one, though I got the impression that they were pretty similar."

"God-like powers," Kieran supplied.

"Angel-like," Jack corrected him. "Gods tend to demand worship. Angelo never does. He just wants the odd beer."

"I've never seen Neo drink beer," Adam said thoughtfully as he started up to get another can of beer and X pushed him back into his seat. "Then again I haven't seem him that often," he finished huffily at not being allowed more than one can.

"Your too young to drink that much," Kieran commented to him, having some more himself and guiltily realising that he was onto his third already. "So," he said to Jack, trying to deflect the conversation, "what the hell is the Black Lands?"

"It's a Parasite Universe," Jack said.

"Don't you mean 'Parallel'," X asked. He was still on his first beer as well.

Jack shook his head. "A parallel universe is something that doesn't technically exist. If they were parallel then they would be exactly the same as the ones they were parallel to and therefore impossible to tell apart so they might as well be the same ones. A Parasite Universe is one that feeds off a host universe, latching on and," he seemed stuck for words, "stealing, I suppose, ideas from its host. The Black Lands are an odd one. The sort of ideas that this universe takes are generally to do with large monsters mainly. Given that I've had to follow it through several of, what could be described as, Anime or Manga universes, it's picked up all sorts of ideas from them.

"The problem comes from the portals. You see every so often the barriers between the host and parasite begin to break down and portals become active. With the right equipment these can be opened properly and it's possible to go from one to the other. Now normally this equipment is very specialised and you only get random openings occurring by accident, at worst. Then, in one universe, Terranew turned up."

"Terranew?" Kieran hadn't heard that name before. It didn't sound like Genom so it probably wasn't them behind it.

"Terranew is a company that worked out a way of opening a portal. They can track an active portal that hasn't been opened. I've never been quite sure of their motives but given that their general reaction to anyone else finding out about the Black Lands is to kill them, I think I'm safe in saying that they are bad news.

"Like I said though, they found a way to access the portals. Soon afterwards, Angelo and I managed to put a dent in the Black Lands so that it left that universe. Neither of us banked on Terranew being able to follow it but apparently they can track its pathway and ended up in the same universe that it was hooked onto again. I must have put a dent in them dozens of times before and every one of them they've turned up in a different universe."

"How do they do it? Or how do you put a 'dent' in them?"

"As far as I can work out, with regards to them 'doing it', only one person actually goes. His name's Harmen Solen and I've noticed that he turns up in every single universe that Terranew does. Of course in most cases I'm a bit busy to ask for names, but his I've managed to work out. They seem to have the technology to jump between universes, same technology as opens the portals I guess, I've never found out.

"As for the 'dent', that's quite interesting as well. If I manage to stop Terranew from opening a portal for about a month, then the Black Lands seem to get bored and drift away. Unfortunately that means getting to their equipment within a couple of minutes of them starting it up. When they can start one on just about any part of the planet, that's hard."

Kieran nodded, noticing absently that he was onto his fifth beer. "Well you can teleport can't you?"

"My teleportation abilities are a bit more limited in some ways than yours apparently are. I can do some interesting tricks like that self-repair thing I did with Zero, but I can't teleport more than a hundred kilometres in one go. Fortunately Terranew only tend to open portals near to their HQ, which right now is somewhere in this area."

"You don't know?" Kieran was having trouble with this idea. Bad guy companies were generally obvious about where they were based.

"I've raided a few of their facilities over the years," Jack said. "One of them was underground, about the same size as the city it was under. Raze that and raze the city as well. Another was an office block. They mined the whole thing so if anyone attacked, they could level the city, or a large part of it anyway. One of the best they had was when they took over a caravan park, brought in a load of caravans of their own and filled them with all of their usual gear. They didn't keep that one long though.

"Terranew has no really continuous strategy when they set up shop. They make use of what they can and are good at fitting into the local set-up. They don't break laws or do anything to actually cause trouble. When they do they simply stop opening portals then follow the Black Lands when it leaves. You can't bring anything legal against them because most of the time they work as a legal firm and can get hold of the best lawyers in that universe. When they're not too busy doing that they sell technology that they've pilfered from other universes. Believe it or not I ran into pieces of a Guyver's Control Metal in the hands of American troops who were in the middle of a battle against Nazi Boomers a few jumps ago." He frowned reflectively. "That was a very screwed up universe."

Kieran looked at him, slightly incredulous. He wasn't quite sure what a Guyver was, but if someone was using it against a Boomer, then things must have been in trouble. He frowned, rolling the word round in his mind. 'Out of control'. What sort of name is that for a piece of technology?

Jack stood before they could continue and walked over to one wall where a clock was hanging next to some kind of computer screen showing a map of what Kieran guessed to be the local area. A few faint dots seemed to be visible on it.

"Well," Jack said after tapping it a couple of times, "the tracker isn't picking up any Beasts or Portals. I guess we'll be safe for the night." He turned back to the three of them. "Now we have to work out who gets the bed."

Systems reinitialising…

Current Local Time: 0938 hrs

Self-repair systems operating…

Unknown repair system interfacing…

System diagnostic unavailable

"Oh brother," Kyle said. He could feel that he still had his armour on, despite everything that he'd been through. He wasn't sure but he seemed to be lying on something soft. Oh yes, and he hurt.

There was a dull ache throughout his entire body, which was actually quite surprising given that from what he could remember of his last few seconds of consciousness, he should have been toasted. Certainly bits of him still felt like they'd been put a bit too close to the furnace recently.

"How you doing kid?"

Kyle opened his eyes and turned his head slightly. His vision settled on the remarkably solid and reassuring form of Zero. The Reploid had removed his armour at some point recently and an oval scar on each arm told that maybe Kyle hadn't caught the worst of it during that fight.

He tried to sit up. Slightly put out, he tried to move his arm. Getting more frantic, he tried to move any part of himself. "Why can't I move?"

Zero frowned down on him, and then touched something on the shelf above him. "Ah!"

"What?"

"According to this, your primary motor functions are still in pieces from the beating you took."

"I've got backups."

Zero nodded absently as he did something to the thing on the shelf. "Again according to this, half of your backup systems are repaired but non-operational. Your backup motor functions are currently being used by your tactile sensors. It looks though like the systems are just about online but apparently your repair systems are busy re-routing everything right now."

"It can't take me that long to repair myself surely."

Zero looked down on him, slightly sceptical. "Kyle, do you remember any of last night?"

Kyle frowned. "We were fighting those monsters… I took on one of them and got pretty badly toasted… Nothing beyond that."

"When we got here I heard them say that your bio-functions, you know: breathing and such, were down to about twenty percent efficiency. Your repair systems were down to sixty percent…"

Kyle tried to work this out. Never before had he been quite so badly beaten up. The idea behind the armour was that it was supposed to protect him from such things.

"There is of course a bright side," Zero said, making a bad attempt at covering a grin.

"What?" Kyle wasn't quite in the mood for such things as Zero's sense of humour.

"Now I can find out if you're ticklish without you running off."

Jack Tomlinson ran his fingers through his hair and glanced in the mirror. One of the unexpected bonuses of the Merge technology was that, since it altered his entire physiology, he hadn't actually needed to have a bath or shower for years. Whenever he activated the technology, or even simply teleported, it sorted him out so that he looked reasonably respectable.

Pulling on a pair of jeans, he headed down the stairs to check on his patients. He was actually quite amazed at how well the pair of them had been doing last night.

Of course this morning he wasn't quite as impressed. Finding one of them threatening to tickle the other wasn't quite what he had expected from his brethren. "Hey, none of that."

Jack almost smiled at the speed with which Zero turned to stare at him. "Who are you?"

"How about the guy that saved both of your butts last night." He was aware that he hadn't bothered to put a shirt on and Zero was probably amazed at that, but he'd never worried about such things before. Taking on creatures from the Black Lands and never having anyone thank you for it gave you a 'so what' kind of attitude to other people's opinions.

"Can you tell me why I can't move? I don't intend to trust Zero to tell me," Kyle said from where he lay on the sofa.

Jack wandered over and looked at the screen. "Well it says here that all your motor functions below your neck still need a few minutes to re-route themselves back through their original paths. Give it, say, thirty seconds after that for the systems to reset and you should be on your feet."

Kyle nodded slowly, probably all the movement that he was capable of. "Can you keep that egomaniac away from me until then?"

Jack glanced at Zero, who shrugged, grinned, and then headed out of the room.

Jack shook his head in wonder. "If that's the fate that I would have been consigned to…"

"Eh?"

Jack glanced down at Kyle and smiled. "When I was very young, I was thrown through a dimensional portal from my home universe. I wasn't even a year old when it happened. Landed on the orphanage's doorstep apparently. When I was a few years older I found this armour. It was in a capsule in a junkyard. Kids had been messing around with it for years. When I went and hid in it though, the thing activated and bonded with me."

"Almost the same way that I got this armour," Kyle said. "My grandfather left me some technology so that when X and Zero were reactivated they could give me it. It basically allows me to access or hide my armour as I want. I didn't even have armour until then, I just worked in a lab trying to recreate it. Granddad even thought to set up the armour so that only Kieran and I could use it."

"Sounds similar. The main difference though is that this armour was set up so that only I could use it. Also, it was from the same universe that I was. My guess was that at some point I'd been born, chosen to use the armour, then something went wrong and I got chucked out where no one could follow me, along with the armour."

Kyle nodded understandingly. In mid nod though, he frowned. On the shelf above the sofa, the diagnostic equipment showed that his motor functions had returned. Slowly, Kyle sat up, systematically checking even muscle as he did. His armour still had a slightly melted look to it, though it was possible that was its normal design. If it wasn't then it was probably still fixing itself.

Kyle didn't seem to notice the lead coming out of his arm and up to the shelf until he tried to stand up and nearly pulled the gear off it. Jack was pleased to see that the repair kit that had been attached next to the leads had vanished into him, apparently without trace.

"Is it safe to take these out?"

Jack shrugged. "Can you access your own diagnostic programs?"

Kyle cocked his head as if listening to something. "Yeah, I got 'em."

Jack wandered over and pulled the leads from Kyle's dataport. As he coiled the lead up and put it back on the shelf, Kyle took a few cautious sets round the room.

"Kyle!"

Jack turned, slightly startled, as Kieran ran in front the next room and embraced his brother. "You're OK."

"Yeah," said Kyle, obviously still weak.

"I was a bit worried last night."

"Only a bit?"

Jack laughed. "When we had you hooked up to the best repair/ diagnostic systems outside Dr Light's lab for most of the night, 'a bit' is all you need."

"You know Dr Light?" Kyle sounded amazed by this.

"I have a few bits of information on him in here," Jack tapped the back of his head. "I generally need something to trigger it before I can remember it though. I've never worked out if the knowledge was already there or whether I got it from my armour."

"Ah good, you've stopped napping," X said as he walked into the room. "It's about time."

Kyle glared at him sarcastically.

"Where's Adam?" Jack had noticed that the teenager had been awake for quite a while last night, probably not just because (as far he he'd been concerned) it was just coming into the afternoon.

"I think he managed his first hangover," Kieran said, grinning slightly. "That beer went straight to his head."

"Well if you feel like waking him, I'll arrange breakfast.

"Then I think we need to find out what we're capable of."

Chapter 3 – X-Busters at dawn

"You have a firing range in your cellar!?"

Zero's words were still echoing around the spacious room for several seconds after they had arrived there and they had been uttered.

Kyle had absent-mindedly punched Zero in the jaw without looking round as a means of shutting him up.

Jack had brought them down there so that they could test their weapons, or those that were safe to use indoors.

For someone who had his own lab, house and pretty much run of the town back home, Kyle found he was alarmingly impressed by the room. One end of it was railed to prevent anyone doing something like walking out into anyone-else's line of fire. At the far end, what looked like bullet marks and X-Buster blast holes were visible, giving the impression that not only had an army been through, but they'd been fighting a war as they went. The cardboard targets at the far end were mostly in pieces, though a fresh supply was available by the door.

Breakfast had been wonderful as far as Kyle was concerned. Jack had pointed out that his repair systems had had to use quite a lot of his excess body weight over-night whilst trying to heal him, so amongst other things he was starving hunger.

Bacon, fried eggs, baked beans, cereal, milk, tea and coffee were all on offer and had made them aware of the fact that Jack was, if nothing else, a good host.

Over breakfast they'd discussed the Black Lands and Jack had recounted to him and Zero the same details he'd related to the rest of the team. Both had been slightly shocked by the knowledge of what they were up against.

One of the extra details that Jack had added had startled all of them. "Those ones that we were fighting, weren't the worst of it. I'll explain when we're downstairs, but these things get very bad."

Now that they were downstairs, Kyle was almost too shocked by what he saw to even remember it. Jack was full of surprises.

"Yeah, it's a shooting range," Jack said as they looked around. "One of the basic rules that I always live by is that you should never use a weapon in battle without testing it without a very good reason, like not having time. Generally though, a decent weapon is too powerful to test down here."

"So what do you test?" Zero was rubbing his jaw reflectively, and seemed to be keeping Trigger between himself and Kyle.

"E-Buster mainly. Point-Defence cannons as well. Some of my other weapons, though a couple just aren't safe here."

"Well let's see how well we do," Kyle said, activating his armour. As he did it, Jack activated his.

"Let's see you do it then," Jack said.

Kyle glanced down at Jack's arms. "You don't have a weapon."

Jack looked down as well, then raised his right hand so that it was level with his shoulder and clenched it into a fist. A haze of light seemed to cover it for an instant, then faded to reveal a version of X-Buster that Kyle wasn't familiar with; the E-Buster presumably. "You were saying?"

Kyle frowned at the E-Buster, glanced down at his own weapon, glanced up again…

His motor systems whined audibly as he brought up his X-Buster, charging it up to a medium shot and blowing up one of the targets down at the other end of the room. Before the shot had even hit, he'd switched over to Rapid Fire and had fired at all of the other targets.

In the confined space the noise was almost deafening as the shots passed through the targets, seemingly without touching them, and hit the far wall. As the shrapnel came back at them, Kyle instinctively raised an arm…

Some kind of energy shield sprang into life, deflecting the shards away from the group of them.

Once the dust had settled, Jack coughed, almost nervously. "Did you mean to do that?"

"Not quite like that," Kyle admitted.

Jack shook his head and aimed his own weapon along the length of the room at one of the targets that Kyle hadn't managed to hit. A single low-power shot came out and hit it. Before Kyle could say anything though, Jack shifted his aim slightly and a beam of energy shot from the end of his E-Buster, drilling into the concrete and raising a cloud of super-heated dust from it.

In the same instant that the continuous beam stopped, Jack charged up his weapon to a medium shot and fired. Bits of concrete were flung back at them again, though before any of them could reach the shield, various parts of Jack's armour lit up and shots began whizzing round the room, knocking the bits of concrete out of the air, or at least away from the group, before they came too close.

"Point-defence Nano-cannons," Jack said by way of explanation when he caught sight of their expressions. "Designed to take out incoming objects that might pose a threat."

Kyle shook his head in wonder, and would have gone on to comment on the weirdness of the idea, when a red light next to the door began flashing.

Jack amazed all of them by swearing, not just fluently but solidly for several seconds. Then they followed him as he ran for the door and thumped up the stairs.

When Kyle caught up with him, Jack was fiddling with several pieces of equipment including some kind of screen hanging on the wall next to the clock. "I knew it, I just knew it," Jack was saying.

"Knew what?" Kyle came up behind Jack and was instantly struck by the sophistication of the technology in front of him.

"There's a portal opening. Looks like Terranew managed to find it first though. I'd guess we've got about five minutes before they open it."

"So what do we do?" Zero had apparently activated his armour on his way up the stairs and had an inactive Z-Sabre in his hand.

"I've got the location of the generator," Jack said, tapping hastily at something on his wrist. "If we can take that out within five minutes we're safe."

"Won't they have a second one?" Kyle knew as a scientist that you should always have backup equipment in the area.

Jack shook his head though. "It takes about three minutes to start it up and the portal is only in a suitable state for about two. If they have a second set active it'll disrupt the portal and it won't even get to a state where it can open."

Kyle nodded, forced to accept this on trust. "Armour up guys," he called out to the others. As they all did, Kyle turned back to Jack. "Where are we going then?"

"Just make sure you're all holding onto someone else," Jack said making one final check of the equipment and pressing something that caused the front door to go thunk loudly as if some kind of large bolts had slid into place.

With one last look, he laid a hand on Kyle's shoulder while the others did the same until they were all touching. Jack had kept a hand free and pressed something on his wrist.

Kyle was alarmed when, without his intervention, his teleporter system started up and he and the others vanished in a flash of light.

Systems confirm: mass teleport completed

Scanner systems confirm portal equipment in the area

Negative readings on Non-Combat persons

Nine hostiles detected

Combat status

When they landed, Jack found Kyle glaring at him. "What?"

"You could have warned me," Kyle said. "That did not feel good."

"Tell me about it," Jack said, indicating that they should be quiet and keep low. He looked round, confirming his scanner's statement that they were in the right place.

They had come down, hopefully without being noticed, on the pathway next to the golf course. With the road leading up to the course's car park to their left and the town on their right, the golf course itself, where the generator equipment had been set up, was on the other side of a high grassy bank. From the couple of times that Jack had been here on a casual basis, he guessed that the Terranew team were trying for the third hole in a pretty odd way.

"I'm registering nine hostiles. That probably means six guards and three technicians. We need to take out the guards, then the equipment. The guards are the ones in suits. The scientists wear body-armour."

"Why not just take out the equipment? Surely that would be easier," X whispered back.

"Listen," Jack hissed, "if we don't take out those guards and aim for the generator equipment instead, we'll be dead before we can teleport out. Trust me, I know that of which I speak."

Kyle glared at him, turned round so that he was facing towards the generator and seemed to focus through several metres of grass and dirt to where the guards were. "Those guards aren't even carrying any weapons."

Jack had to physically restrain himself from verbally lashing out. "One of the things that Terranew came up with was a means of transforming, for a short while, a Human being into one of those creatures. But they don't pick the easy ones for that. They pick the tough ones. And if you really want to know what trouble we've got, the only reason we survived yesterday, was that those things were totally confused.

"The Black Lands only use a few rules. If they don't like a rule, or it might be inconvenient, it's ignored. That's why their weapons are so powerful; rules work differently there. There a weapon might have the same effect as a peashooter, here it'll be like a small bomb. Those creatures don't know that. The guards do. They know the rules that this universe works with and will quite happily use those weapons as often as they need."

"So we have to move fast," said Zero. All of them seemed to be getting annoyed at him.

"Moving fast won't help. If those guys get going they might be a bit surprised at the weapons they're up against, but after that we'll be dead. Particularly seeing as most of them will be able to withstand our firepower."

The rest of the group exchanged a look.

"Fine," Jack said finally. "Aim for the equipment if you like. Just don't expect me to stay behind and help you fight off those things. If there's even one of them alive when that generator's taken out, I'm leaving." He turned away from the golf course and sat on his heels, eyes closed, E-Buster held ready. "Charge up, when I shouted 'now', get over the back and fire. Switch to rapid fire straight after and don't stop if you know what's good for you until those guards are dead."

Again, there was that look. But they did start getting into position, ready to open fire.

Jack began charging his weapon, opened his eyes, then jumped. "NOW!"

He spun as he jumped, followed by the others. His armour's enhancements kicked in as he jumped, allowing him to vertically Air-Dash so that he was several metres above the bank before he stopped. His Battle Computer switched his Visor's HUD over to Deep Radar as he brought his E-Buster round in a tight circle that ended up with it facing one of the guards. The sensors built into his point-Defence cannons informed him of which guards were already being targeted by the rest of the group and picking up on the fact that Zero had locked onto that guard. Switching target, Jack fired a split second behind Xtreme, who was ahead of everyone.

Five of the guards went down before they'd even had a chance to turn round. As Jack landed back on the path his Battle Computer picked up that one of the guards had been behind the generator and been shielded from the blast. Though Trigger had hit the generator it was still working.

As Trigger landed, cursing, Jack grabbed him by the shoulder. "Don't try again."

As the rest of them landed, Jack noticed that the guard had made use of the few seconds he had before they attacked again by transforming. Before Jack could warn the others though, what looked like a ripple passed through first the bank, then them.

"What the hell was that?" Jack wasn't sure who had said that and didn't actually care. Something had to have gone wrong. What he found, he didn't like.

Teleporting equipment inoperative:

Repair time: ten minutes minimum

"Shit! The damned thing got our teleporting systems. We're going to have to leave on foot."

The rest of the team apparently checked their own diagnostics as they all agreed that they were in trouble now.

Suddenly, Jack's Battle Computer flashed a warning at him. Quickly, hoping that he wasn't too late, he Air-Dashed vertically.

The guard, once Human, now resembling something like a twenty metre high Rhino with claws, burst through the bank without actually slowing, showering dirt all over the road and sending the rest of the team flying.

Making the most of his opportunity, Jack twisted in the air, firing off a massive shot at the generator. In the dark though, at such speeds, a shot like that was never going to hit, even with the aid of a Battle Computer. On the plus side I did nail one of the scientists.

As he landed, managing to use the recoil from the shot to throw himself away from the creature, he turned quickly to get a better look at it.

In the orange glow of the streetlamps that hadn't been knocked over, the thing looked slightly less like a Rhino. It still moved on four legs, was armoured and had a couple of horns on its front. Possibly though, this was what Rhinos hoped to be like when they grew up.

Its armour plating was black. The horns on its head were a lot sharper than a normal Rhino's as well and would probably go through Titanium X armour easily. The claws on its feet probably could as well and were a metre long at least. What looked like a mace hung where its tail should have been while a series of spines covered its belly, guaranteed to disembowel anyone caught underneath it.

Knowing the futility of attacking the thing, Jack looked around for something else, anything, that he could use against the beast.

He found it in the form of the still active Generator.

"Aim for the Generator! That thing'll have to protect it!" He ripped off a medium charge shot as he yelled, hoping that he was right and that the guard's hearing was impaired by the transformation.

Responding almost exactly as Jack had predicted he would, the guard turned and charged back to the generator when he noticed them firing on it. Air-Dashing back to the bank, Jack began to lay down a pattern of fire at the guard and the generator behind him.

As the others joined in, X-, T-, Z- and E-Buster shots began to impact on the guard's carapace, not appearing to actually cause any damage while the guard provided perfect protection for the Generator.

"Great, now we can't destroy it," Zero commented as he continued to unleash shots in the direction of the guard.

"At least he's not attacking us," Jack said. His tactical computer was working flat out trying to find some way for them to get round the guard and destroy the Generator. It briefly considered the idea of them spreading out so that they could surround the generator and it would be forced to leave at least one side unguarded. Of course if it became impossible for the guard to protect the generator, he would probably simply try to gut them with his spikes. Certainly they wouldn't stand much of a chance against him if he did.

Trigger seemed to have been considering something while they continued to blast away. Suddenly, he lowered his right and raised his left arm, pointing it at the guard's flank. "Shining Laser!"

The glowing beam shot out striking the guard's armoured side. Jack was already diving when Trigger shouted, and so fared better than the others when the laser was not only reflected back at them, but became a hemisphere of light, chopping up the grass and dirt within a hundred metres, not to mention nearly burning the armour off Jack's legs.

Armour efficiency: 95%

Spectral sensors: 98%

Repair Systems active…

Rolling and coming up again, Jack was just in time to see that the guard had made the most of the distraction and was already most of the way towards them. Given that his sensors were telling him that most of the others were almost blinded by the backfiring laser, he wasn't expecting any of them to survive long.

Then something very bright happened right in front of them.

Neo Paradox, Timerforcer, adventurer and part-time knight-in-shining-armour, was feeling mildly bored. He'd been cruising around, fighting Zoanoids, Boomers, Stormtroopers, Borg and goodness only knew how many other pests that threatened Humanity for a few days and right now it had got to the point that he wasn't even bothering to dodge the shots.

So it was with a certain amount of joy that he noticed (though not by any senses that a Human could understand) his old friend Kyle Reeves performing a crossover.

Artfully finishing off a dozen AT-ATs in a single sweep of his hand, adding some interesting ice statues to the landscape of Hoth, he vanished into a quiet side-dimension to observe.

From his advantaged viewpoint, he watched Kyle being pasted by the fire-breathing creature, stepping in without being seen to keep Kyle's vital functions active for long enough that Jack could save him. He'd been interested by the mass-teleport trick that Jack had pulled, not to mention slightly offended at the way he casually over-rode the other Reploid's controls of their teleport equipment.

The night had bored him slightly, sitting around watching Humans heal having the same amount of appeal as watching paint dry, particularly when you knew for a fact they were going to survive.

He'd been more interested the next morning when they'd gone to take on the Terranew troops at the golf course. Not wanting to interfere too much, he merely gave them the odd nudge to make sure they hit their targets. Unfortunately one of the targets was behind the generator and no amount of nudges could move either the shots or guard that quickly.

He'd thought about stepping in when their teleport systems had been disabled, then realised that they then would leave and the generator wouldn't be destroyed.

When Trigger opened up with his laser, Neo had almost given up hope. When the shot had bounced straight back at them, not actually doing any real harm, merely blinding them for a few seconds, he decided to step in.

In his haste, as he took a (metaphorical) step forwards, he forgot one of the most basic rules of inter-dimensional travel that he'd been taught even before he'd first met other Timeforcers: always look both ways, you never know when you might step out into the path of an oncoming multi-dimensional portal that wants to land in exactly the same place that you do.

Kyle landed heavily and rolled to avoid the shock. Still half-blinded, he switched over to local Radar to try to find something out about what had happened.

When that turned up totally blank, not blackness or dark but the total absence of anything to even be black or dark in, he switched back to normal vision and tried to blink the spots from his eyes.

What he saw didn't encourage him.

The sky was black. There was no sun, no stars, not even a hint of clouds. Despite this the ground around them was well lit, as was everything else around them. They were in the middle of what looked like a large crater, filled with half a dozen mismatching creatures.

No, please no…

"Damn it, who the hell left that dimensional tear lying around there!?"

"Matrix?" Kyle managed to whisper as he turned to face the source of the swearing. Matrix was indeed there, apparently unhurt, but aggravated.

"Why are these things never simple!?" Matrix continued to call out to the heavens, apparently unaware of those around him.

"What the hell happened?" Beside Kyle, Kieran was climbing to his feet. Kyle noticed that the creatures around them seemed to be as confused as they were right now, probably the only reason they were all still alive.

"That bloody portal landed in the same place as me," Matrix yelled to the world in general, apparently in answer to Kieran's question. "The bloody thing opened and chucked us all through it!"

Kyle and Kieran exchanged a glance Neither of them had seen Neo Paradox in quite this state before.

"You stupid idiot," Jack said as he picked himself up from the other side of Neo. "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

"I was about to save your lives," Neo replied, looking down and frowning, as if uncertain about this.

"Well get us back there, quick!" Jack indicated the creatures around them with his E-Buster.

Neo seemed to notice them for the first time. He considered them with interest, as one might observe a very young kitten's attempts to savage your shoe. Before he actually did something though, he was jumped by something that looked like a large sabre-toothed tiger.

The creature was flung across the crater a few seconds later, but in that time the rest of the creatures had attacked them. X-Busters, Z-Sabres, Point-defence cannons and Jack's Time-Shear blades came into full use as they attempted to defend themselves with weapons that suddenly didn't have nearly as much clout as they should have had.

Neo had apparently forgotten about them all and was busy tearing the cat that had attacked him to bits, with occasional, happy sounding yells of 'Here pussy!' Kyle kept looking around, hoping that this wasn't his dream.

This in mind, he almost broke down and cried when the familiar, house-sized creature suddenly leapt over the side of the crater, whipped one of its tentacles round and jabbed it at Neo.

The Timeforcer had known it was coming. He'd managed to turn round before it was even half-way to him. There though he froze, a look of near horror spread across his face, which only vanished when several of the tentacles were jabbed into him.

Kyle winced as from thirty metres away he saw one of the tentacles go through Neo and out of his back. Blue and red lightning began to crackle back and forth along the tentacle. Neo screamed in pain as another pair of tentacles went into his chest. Some liquid, glowing a bright rainbow surrounded by a white haze, began to dribble out of the wounds, fading as it fell to the ground. For an instant Neo's form faded to reveal what might have been a small star skewered on several tentacles.

Kyle tried to fight back tears as Neo's form reasserted itself. Having to witness the same attack twice was bad enough. Knowing that he might have been able to prevent it made it worse.

"Hyper Giga Crusher!" he yelled raising his arms in a double-uppercut to the creature in front of him. His vision faded for an instant as a glow surrounded him, changing his armour into his heaviest attack form.

Hyper Giga Crusher Armour active…

Armour efficiency: 95%

Sensor efficiency: 10% (visual only)

Repair Systems Active…

The tactical HUD came up, seeming to hover just in front of his eyes whilst not actually blocking his view. Focusing on a large, dog-like beast that was ten metres away, he began charging to that armour's equivalent of a medium charge shot.

The glowing red bolt struck the thing in the face, knocking it across the crater. What might have been blood began to spurt from its mouths and the wing-like appendages on its back, one of which had been snapped off by the force of the blast.

Charging again, this time as high as he could manage, Kyle took a run in the direction of Zero, leapt and fired off the most powerful shot he could at the creature that had impaled Neo.

For a second his vision was blocked by the massive shot that he had fired. Landing and rolling, he got up onto one knee just in time to see the shot pass one of the other creatures, the shockwave knocking it aside. He then watched as the shot flew at the huge creature that had impaled his friend and saw it…

Impact against one of Neo's totally indestructible energy shields.

Matrix felt the creature slid its tentacles through his defences (not to mention his lower intestines) as his mind froze up with terror at what was in front of him. He wasn't sure why he was afraid of it, it was just that something in his racial memory caused this creature to have the same effect on his self-control as several tonnes of super-heated molten magma has on a common-or-garden Snail.

He saw his blood (not the crude Human liquid; this was almost pure multi-dimensional dialectic, chock full of the power of the gods), seep out of the wounds and drip onto the ground as the creature lifted him into the air.

Through the pain he could feel the creature working its way through his powers, drawing on his capabilities, stealing everything that made him a Timeforcer instead of simply a Human with an ego.

In desperation he did the only thing he could: he cut off his power, erecting barriers that prevented him (and therefore also the creature) from getting at it while grabbing and holding to himself as much power as he could before the creature got hold of it. Unfortunately this wasn't much and he lost control of his material form for an instant.

Already the creature (and the mere thought of it still caused him to cringe in terror) had gathered what little power he hadn't grabbed himself or cut off. It wasn't much compared to how much he was normally able to yield, but it was still enough to do an awful lot of damage.

As the tentacles dropped him heavily onto the sand again he heard Kyle shout something about a "Hyper Giga Crusher". With so much of his mind focused on guarding what little power he still controlled and much of the rest frozen with terror, it took him almost a second to realise that Kyle had activated a new armour for himself.

He just about managed to turn his head as a glow started up nearby and focused on the shot that Kyle fired in the direction of the creature that held him. It was probably a stupid idea, he realised. This thing was so tied into what passed for his nervous system (not the material one; the one that went beyond Human capabilities) that if it died, he probably would.

As it was that would probably have been a happy ending of sorts. What they got was a nasty one, the sort that little kids never get to hear about, like where the wicked witch doesn't bother sending Snow White to sleep with a potion: she just knifes her.

Drawing on some of his own instincts, the creature responded to the threat posed by the shot by pulling an energy shield out of thin air to block it. Through the link that joined the pair of them, Matrix felt the creature was weakened by the attack and that a couple more might finish it off. It seemed to realise this as well and jabbed a tentacle in the direction of Kyle, shooting out a fireball from the tip that sent the young man flying and probably damaged his armour.

As he struggled to do anything, even considering pulling the tentacles out of himself with his hands, he felt something in his time-sense calling out to him. Focusing on it he realised what he had to do.

Drawing on all the power that he still commanded, he thrust outward with his mind, diving back through time and across the multiverse to a time and place where Kyle slept peacefully, unaware of what would be happening to him in the near future. Drawing on his full telepathic capabilities, he pulled the sleeping mind out of its body and dragged it across time to the Black Lands.

For an instant his control flickered as the creature jabbed another tentacle through him and he almost lost Kyle's mind. Managing to dump it nearby, he beat at the tentacles with his fists, certain that it wouldn't help but desperate to delay his own demise.

This seemed to have an effect until the creature sent a surge of its own pain, magnified to almost unimaginable degrees by the power it had stolen from him, back through into his nervous system. Unbidden, a scream rose to his lips, reminding him of his life before his powers had developed.

"MATRIX!" He heard Kyle's voice, faint and almost inaudible, calling from nearby. Knowing that help might be nearby he grabbed at one of the tentacles, trying to pull it out of him, that voice giving him hope.

"MATRIX!" He heard the voice again which stirred something in him. Raising a hand he threw lightning bolts at the creature, then doubled up at the feeling of relayed pain. Throwing his head back, he looked over to his left where the ghostly form of Kyle Reeves was standing on the edge of the crater in armour.

"Kyle!" He reached out, drawing on more of his power, knowing that he didn't have long to manage this. Forcing his telepathic capabilities to work as he wanted them to, he spoke directly into Kyle's mind.

Forgive me for doing this Kyle, but I don't have a choice.

I'll try to explain while I have the strength left. I can't maintain this contact across Time, Space and the Multiverse for much longer though. I'll give you a set of numbers. They're gravity well calculations. Get the rest of the Maverick Hunters together and crossover as soon as possible. You'll meet up with Jack Tomlinson, he'll explain things.

You need to go soon.

Dumping the gravity well calculations into Kyle's mind, he felt the creature trying to get through his defences again, breaking down the barriers that cut him and it off from a large part of his power. He responded the only way he could.

He gave Kyle's mind a push to get it back to its body at the same time that he generated a massive plasma explosion, focusing the blast along the tentacles of the creature, burning away at its carapace, tearing apart its innards, burning nerves away (he gritted his teeth against the feelings that were relayed back to him). He himself was caught in the backwash of the blast, which tore apart his cloths, scared his face and body and burned his flesh. As he felt the creature's link to him drop for an instant, he did what he couldn't have done before: he teleported out, taking the Reploids with him.

To teleport earlier, he knew would have caused the creature to be taken with him, something that wouldn't have helped as it would have gained full control of his powers in mid-jump. Now though, he could manage it without endangering the rest of the Multiverse.

As he teleported them, simply fading them out of existence and putting them somewhere else because he really didn't have time or power to waste on interesting visual effects, he tried to heal his wounds. It was easier to do whilst he was teleporting and with luck he would be able to fix up his more serious wounds. This was taking a lot of power and not being able to heal himself when he had a ten centimetre wide hole through his belly was going to be interesting if it didn't work.

He naturally took the shortest route out of the Black Lands that he could. This meant that they were back on the Golf course.

Jack had just fired at a large Dragon-like creature when Matrix teleported them out. He landed and rolled as they arrived back on the golf-course.

Standing quickly he saw that what had been a few tense minutes inside the Black Lands had turned into several hours in the real world. Grimacing he looked around, trying to work out how quickly they might need to evacuate the area.

He noticed that, what was presumably the Timeforcer Neo Paradox, was lying, clad only in a hospital gown and apparently unconscious, on the grass a few metres away. He seemed to be badly cut in places but showing no signs of the massive injuries he should have taken as a result of having those tentacles pushed through him. The rest of the team was nearby as well.

As was a pair of men dressed in black suits with white shirts.

Tactical sensors locked onto the pair of them, more detailed scans focused closer in on their waists, searching for a vital clue.

Code Red: * COMBAT ALERT *

Subject 1: Terranew Transformation technology detected

Subject 2: Terranew Transformation technology detected

No other hostiles located

Praying that he wasn't too late, Jack brought his E-Buster round, motor functions whining as he did as they strained to keep up with his demands.

Unfortunately both of the guards were already moving. They dived in opposite directions, fingers grasping for controls on the black, oval shaped boxes hooked onto their belts. Their features were starting to shift even as they hit the grass. One began to take on a more avian form, arms shortening and coming forward while wings spread from his shoulder blades. The other seemed to just become skinnier, his features more goblin-like. In both cases cloths faded from sight, being replaced respectively with golden feathers and furry rags.

For once the others had the sense to not ask questions and started firing before the guards had finished their transformations. The bird-guard was hit in the wing, screeched a bit then took to the air and vanished into the distance. The other though…

"Stand still damnit!"

Jack was used to hitting hard-to-hit targets. If they weren't hard to hit when they got to him they were generally already dead by someone else. This guy though was making full use of a body that wasn't affected by air-friction, gravity or g-forces and seemed to have bones made from loosely packed jelly.

Even when Jack switched to continuous beam and carved a huge line in the dirt, this guy simply dodged it, putting himself through an impossible set of twists so that every shot missed him.

After a few seconds of dodging their shots, the guard planted a foot firmly in the ground, leapt backwards and landed running.

"Shi…" Jack's expletive was cut off by the guard hitting him at several times the speed of sound. The sonic boom echoed around the area, throwing the others off balance as well.

He was flung almost a dozen metres through the air then driven almost a metre into a small hill. His sensors were knocked out for an instant by the impact and the g-forces and he had no idea what was likely to happen next. Guessing though, he aimed his E-Buster in what he hoped was the right direction and fired.

His sensors came back online just in time to see the guard, at least twenty metres away, dodge the shot and take a run at Trigger.

Estimated maximum speed of hostile: 1340 m/s-1

Armour efficiency: 76%

Teleportation systems: 2 minutes repair time

Suggested action: Retreat

Repair Systems Active…

How can we retreat from someone who can outrun any of us?

He levered himself out of the hole and looked around, still slightly dazed, only to be rammed back into the hole by the guard.

"Didn't say you could get up," the guard hissed at him before vanishing from the now deepened hole.

Jack levered himself up again, then, when he had a clear enough sensor image to work out that he had a clear path, Air-Dashed out of the hole and tried to run into the guard. The guard though seemed to step aside with almost insulting ease and knock him aside with an almost spidery arm.

As he landed, Jack rolled, then ended up flat on his back as an elbow vanished down a sandy bunker. That does it, he thought to himself. Sticking two fingers in his mouth, he whistled.

Loudly.

Kyle tried to avoid being run into by the guard, but merely ended up being caught on the left arm. As he landed he realised that it hurt quite a lot. Probably dislocated, he realised. What kind of creature can dislocate a Reploid's shoulder when he's in armour?

Grabbing his shoulder with his right hand, he wrenched at it and felt the armour click back into place. As he looked around to try to find the guard he heard Jack whistle.

This wasn't a casual whistle though. Real thought had gone into this whistle. It had several tones, at least half of which were rapidly jumping up and down the audible frequency range. It was also loud.

The guard seemed to have stopped, apparently interested by this new tactic. Kyle considered taking advantage of it, then thought better. The guard would certainly take offence at being interrupted in the middle of watching Jack and probably drive him several metres into the ground. Even with the Hyper Giga Crusher armour, that might do quite a bit of damage to him.

In this state of mind, he was slightly shocked when there was a blur, and the guard went flying across the grass and into the trees nearby.

Where the guard had been now stood a tall man, with black hair, lightly tanned skin, dark glasses and jungle combat fatigues. A bandolier went over one shoulder with pockets to hold more ammo clips, though all of them were empty. There was a sense of casual power about this man, the nearest to it that he'd come across being Matrix (who was still lying where they'd left him on the grass).

The man looked around, apparently trying to decide if he liked the golf course. He was interrupted in his observations by the guard suddenly breaking the sound barrier again and running at him.

To Kyle it was clear that this person, without any real armour, would be killed by the impact, if not the subsequent acceleration.

He then wasn't sure how the man survived.

In what must have been a blur even to the high-speed guard, the man side-stepped his charge, stuck out a leg and tripped him up. For good measure he added a spin-kick to the back-side to speed him up, meaning that the guard hit the grass at nearly six times the speed of sound.

Somehow managing to flip himself onto his feet again, the guard turned and took another run. This time though the guard ended up running into some kind of invisible barrier that the man had generated simply by holding a hand out with the palm towards the guard. Rebounding into a barrier behind him, the guard came to an unwilling stop for a second.

The man seemed to lock eyes with the guard for an instant, then moved his hand so that the index finger and thumb made a circle. The guard seemed to focus on this, as did Kyle. His instincts seemed to suggest that this circle could be very important.

The man held his finger and thumb there for a second, then jerked them apart.

Kyle's sensors had begun to make sense of bits of the guard, mainly only his heat signature though. It wasn't much to go on but hopefully he could get something useful out of his combat recorder if they survived this. What he wasn't prepared for was the guard's reaction to the simple gesture.

In the instant that the man jerked his finger and thumb apart, the guard's heat signature vanished. It was as if the life had simply been taken from the guard's body and it had gone in that instant from being a living, breathing creature, to being dead meat.

The guard hung there for an instant, then toppled over backwards, rigor mortis having apparently set in and causing the Goblin-like body to stay totally rigid the whole time.

"Wow," Kyle whispered to himself. Somehow that simple display of silent power had more effect than any of the firework displays Matrix had done.

Zero picked himself up slowly, keeping a careful eye on the man that was standing in the middle of the golf course. He'd managed to miss the worst of the guard's attacks, largely by keeping his Z-Sabre out at all times. Apparently the guard hadn't liked the idea of tangling with the high-energy blade.

Slowly, Zero walked over to Trigger and helped the young Reploid up. Trigger had taken a couple of hits from the speed freak during his attacks and had a bruise running along his right cheek. "You OK kid?"

Trigger nodded, then drew in a breath sharply.

Zero followed his eyes and saw that he was looking at the guard, who was…

'Disintegrating' was the only term that could be applied to what was happening. Parts of the guard were reverting back to Human, some of the suit starting to show through under the furs. Those parts seemed to be stable. The rest of him was slowly flowing down into the grass or fading out of sight where it was.

Trigger knelt down and threw up, or tried to. Given his lack of stomach when in armour he ended up coughing a lot then sitting down, apparently very depressed.

Jack had got up and was talking to the newcomer. The pair of them seemed to know each other quite well. From what had been said over breakfast, Zero mentally labelled this person as 'Angelo'.

Kyle seemed to recover himself quickly. "Do you think the police will be round here soon?"

Jack shook his head. "They've learnt the hard way about taking on these guys. They lost almost a dozen people in one attack once. Even so, we'd better get back to my house. My teleport gear's working, so…"

Harmen Solen switched his vision back to normal optics and jumped down off the roof of the golf club's hut. All in all it had been a reasonably successful mission. Admittedly he'd need to get the scientists working on the problem of how badly the Timeforcer had screwed things up by coming in like that, though hopefully he wouldn't need to move the company to another universe again.

Jack Tomlinson had come as expected. His friends though…

My own brother, allied with his greatest enemy. I should probably kill him for it, but then how will we know what might have happened…

Chapter 4 – R & R

Jack's house was a welcome change from the outside world. There was something comforting about it, as if they'd already got used to it as a safe place for Reploids, where nothing could harm them.

"I think we're all suffering from a bad case of Universe Lag," Zero said as he deactivated his armour and sat down heavily on a sofa. "It was dawn about an hour ago, what time is it now?"

Jack deactivated his own armour and indicated the clock mounted on the wall. Zero looked at it, then checked the watch on his wrist that was set according to his armour's internal-chronometer. Apparently during their few minutes in the Black Lands, they'd lost almost three hours. "This is unreal."

"When you've been following Terranew round for a while," Jack said, "you soon learn to pick up sleep as and when you can. Most of the time when you try transferring into a universe with the Black Lands attached to it you tend to loose a bit of time."

Kyle was nursing his shoulder as he settled next to Zero on the sofa having just helped Kieran lift Neo onto one of the other sofas. "Want to do the introductions or shall I?" He directed the question at Jack, though he might as well have been talking to any of them.

Jack shrugged. "Angelo, may I introduce Kyle Reeves, Megaman X, Zero, Adam Volnut, Kieran Reeves and sleeping beauty down there is apparently Neo Paradox. Neo's supposedly a Timeforcer." He turned to the rest of them, apart from Neo who was still out of it. "Meet my good friend, Dark Angelo. 'Angelo' to his friends."

Angelo nodded to each of them, then looked down at his cloths. While the rest of them had deactivated their armour, Angelo was still wearing the combat gear he had arrived at the golf course in. "This really doesn't suit the locale," he muttered to himself. Almost as an afterthought he made a casual passing gesture with one hand, like a Jedi convincing someone to sell their house for a couple of quid.

A ripple seemed to move out from his hand, passing over his cloths and changing them. The camouflaged combat jacket gave way to a black leather jacket, the combat trousers faded into a pair of black trousers while a spotless and almost painfully white shirt appeared beneath the jacket. The blackened safety goggles, the sort issued when using high velocity weapons, that he'd taken off and put in a pocket of the jacket vanished, to be replaced by a pair of casual shades in his shirt pocket.

He pulled the glasses from his pocket, flicked them out and slipped them very confidently onto his nose. "That's better."

Zero stared at him for an instant, then frowned. "How the hell did you do that?"

Angelo looked him in the eye. "It's a skill."

"I'll bet," Zero said. That look hadn't exactly been friendly and Zero had seen what this guy could do. It occurred to him that people with only some power made a lot of noise about it to show that they had it. People with a lot of power, didn't need to show off. The casual and above all else, quiet, way he'd killed that guard showed the Angelo had a lot of power backing him up.

There was a nervous silence while everyone waited for the tension between the pair of them to either cause them both to explode or calm down. Kyle coughed nervously, apparently unwilling to wait too long.

"So," he began, "how did we do tonight?"

Angelo broke eye contact with Zero, allowing Zero a breather. Not being able to tell if the guy was blinking behind those glasses meant that he'd been trying, for almost half a minute, to outstare his own reflection. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

"You did quite well," Angelo stated. "Your friend down there managed to short-circuit the portal so technically it didn't open when you came in or went out. On the negative side, I spotted someone that looked like Harmen Solen watching you all from the golf club's hut roof. That probably means he has a good idea of who you are and what you're capable of."

"Don't you know?" Trigger seemed to be intrigued by this idea.

"I'm not all knowing kid," Angelo said. "Even you're friend down here," he nudged Neo's prostrate form with a foot, "if he really is a Timeforcer, which I doubt, isn't."

"He is a Timeforcer," Kyle said. The rest of them nodded in agreement.

Angelo looked sceptical. "I can sense a Timeforcer from light-years away. This guy isn't one."

"Yes I sodding well am," Neo said, pulling himself onto an elbow. He was still wearing the hospital gown that he'd apparently outfitted himself with while teleporting them out of the Black Lands.

Angelo didn't look impressed, especially when Neo's elbow missed the edge of the sofa and Adam had to catch him to prevent him from falling off.

"How d'you feel," Kyle asked.

"Like I've been dragged through hell and several dozen Terraformers, backwards, with dozens of demons trying to chew at different parts of my anatomy whilst the Spice Girls serenaded us all and someone was playing silly buggers with a fast-response thermostat." He looked round at their expressions. "What? This is how I felt the last time that happened to me."

Angelo nodded slowly. "He sounds like a Timeforcer."

"And you sound like an Interfacer. I was hoping that someone would turn up and help, though I didn't expect one of you lot." Neo managed to lever himself into a sitting position with Adam's help. "Are you here to help or gloat?"

"Help mainly," Angelo conceded. "Though gloating could be a minor part of it. If you are a Timeforcer then you've lost a lot of your clout."

Neo sat back, rested his head on the back of the sofa, closed his eyes and moaned softly. "That creature that got me, hooked itself straight into my powers. The only thing I could do was cut myself off from my power, thereby also cutting it off. The barriers will probably break down soon, but until then I'm stuck at square one: Human." He looked up at Angelo. "Could you lend me some power till then? I'll pay you back."

Angelo scowled at him. "I don't trust your instincts. The last couple of times I tried something like that with your people I ended up in a hospital with no power myself, and the second time I was slightly more prepared and only ended up badly weakened. If you think I'm going to let you use any of my power…"

Neo groaned and rested his head back again. "Tell me about it later. I might know those guys."

"Friends of yours?"

Neo shook his head. "One of them was sent by the other to kill me before I developed my powers. Don't ask. Suffice to say, I'm not like them."

"That's what the second guy said," Angelo said meaningfully.

"Um, I hate to put a roadblock across Memory Lane, but we do have some vital work to do here. In case neither of you noticed, Terranew weren't totally defeated last night." Kyle was trying to sound like some kind of authority, though against two people who could probably blast the planet out of existence in an instant (on a good day at least), Zero didn't think it sounded too good.

"Yeah well I hate to leave you but I left some serious mess in that jungle. I'd better finish clearing up then I'll get back here." Angelo changed his cloths back to the combat gear, though added what looked like some kind of heavy machine gun, slung over one shoulder by its strap and carried as if it was nothing. "Be seeing you," he said, making a casual farewell gesture in the air. Blue lightning seemed to spring from his fingers, crawling over his body, crackling as it went and causing bits of him to vanish until less than a second later he had all vanished, along with the lightning.

"Showy," Neo commented.

"Compared to who? You maybe?" Kyle was enjoying the chance to tease Neo for once. "The way you come and go you'd think someone had torched a firework factory."

Neo groaned, went to put his head in his hands and caught sight of what he was wearing. "I know it's simple, I know I was in a hurry, I know that creating even something this complex used up my last reserves of power, I know I'd have died of embarrassment if I hadn't created it, but why oh why… Didn't I at least make it a better colour?"

Jack shook his head and headed up the stairs and returned a couple of minutes later with a neon green shirt, tie-dyed trousers, socks, underpants and a pair of slippers. He tossed them at Neo who managed to deflect the slippers but was hit by the rest of it. "That'll have to do until one of your friends feels like being charitable enough to take your measurements and get you some cloths of your own. Don't worry the pants haven't been worn yet."

Neo picked up the rest of the cloths, then held up the trousers. They had once been blue from the looks of things. Despite this Zero noticed that the only blue that was left was mainly down one leg and consisted of almost a dozen distinct shades. The rest was a mess of violent red, neon green, puke yellow and various other bright colours that would have made even the most devout hippy step back and say 'hang on a minute, this must stop'. Neo turned a speculative expression toward Jack, and Zero found himself mentally trying to fit those trousers in with the mental picture he'd come up with so far of the Reploid. They didn't meet up anywhere.

"Believe it or not those were part of what passed for a business suit in one universe I visited. That was one of the times that I almost gave up searching for a way to stop Terranew all together. Living in that universe for two months was like being on class-A psychedelic drugs for a couple of months solidly." He looked slightly troubled. "I never did get round to checking out the city's water supply but I got the impression that most of the population were."

Neo shook his head, gathered the cloths together, and headed off upstairs.

"Top of the stairs, first on your right," Jack called to him as he went up.

"So what's the plan?" X didn't look like he wanted to be waiting here. "Do we raid their offices?"

Jack frowned at him. "Don't you listen? I told you: we can't. There wouldn't be any point even if we did."

"Surely they've done something illegal we could do them for," Kyle said.

"Yeah," Zero agreed. "Have you ever tried finding out?"

Jack sat back and seemed to counting, very slowly, to himself. "If anyone manages to bring anything against them that might shut them down, and they never do anything to risk that, they simply stop opening portals and vanish about a month later. Believe me they have had to do it before and will do it again. They have enough skilled lawyers that they can keep any trial running at least that long and keep themselves open for business at the same time so that they can still be making money all the time."

"They must have done something," Kyle repeated.

Zero watched Jack as he seemed to consider, hard. "I have never heard anything about them doing anything of the sort. I've kept close tabs on it. Possibly they have but people just haven't been willing to pin it on them because they can get such good lawyers. One thing you have to remember though is that what they did more than three weeks ago doesn't matter.

"Three weeks ago they came into this universe. Three weeks ago any criminal record they had was erased and they started anew, no crimes having been committed, no real history of success or failure, nothing to hinder or help them. Already they're one of the biggest legal firms in the world."

The rest of them sat there for a minute, stunned by the task that faced them. Zero was slightly alarmed that while the stress was already beginning to tell on Kyle and X, Jack had been doing this for years at least.

They were interrupted in their thoughts by Neo thumping down the stairs. The Timeforcer was wearing the cloths that Jack had given him and in some countries would probably be arrested within a few minutes as a public hazard. Certainly the brightness of the shirt and the odd colour-scheme of the trousers took a bit of getting used to and would have been enough to distract many people and would cause a few pile-ups if Neo ever tried going out in them.

"Are you sure you haven't got anything else I could wear," Neo asked as he shielded his eyes against the glare from his cloths. Zero noted with interest that the walls and floor around Neo were slightly more green than he would have expected.

Jack shook his head. "I don't have much in the way of cloths at all, without you going through them."

Kyle sighed and began searching through his pockets. Eventually he pulled a could of Yen out of one and flicked them over to Jack. "These local currency?"

Jack examined them then compared them to a couple that he pulled from his own pocket. "Yep." He tossed them back across to Kyle.

"Fine, I could do with a walk and Neo could do with some new cloths." He stood and began looking through his bag, which had been dumped with everyone else's in a neat heap in one corner of the living room.

"What are you're measurements?" Kieran directed the question at Neo as he got up and pulled a pair of trainers out of his own bag.

"Where are you going," Kyle asked his brother.

"With you: I could do with a walk and some new socks so now seems like a good time."

Kyle shook his head tiredly and went back to looking through his bag. Zero looked up at Kieran who had looked back at Neo.

"I think…" Neo seemed to be considering hard. "When I grew up with this body I generally just wore what fitted," he seemed to be exasperated. "I've never had to think about it before but I guess it would be around…" After a bit of considering, he rattled off a couple of numbers.

Zero frowned at him, then activated his armour. Focusing the sensors on Neo, he performed a scan to make sure. "Blimey, he's right. Maybe he's getting some of his powers back." Zero grinned deactivated his armour as Neo glared at him.

"Anything you want particularly," Kyle enquired.

"What I usually wear," Neo said hopefully.

The Reeves brothers exchanged a glance, probably considering the price of such an outing.

"You owe me for this one Neo," Kyle said.

"Take it out of what you owe me for saving your butt a couple of times," Neo replied, sounding slightly irate. Zero guessed that the Timeforcer wasn't liking the idea of having to sit around and wait for things like shopping to happen.

"Come on Jack," Kieran said. "We need you to show us round. We probably won't even know which shops to look for."

"And you think I do?" Jack seemed startled by the idea, but got up and grabbed a pair of heavy boots anyway. "I've only been in this universe for three weeks."

"That's more than us," Kyle pointed out.

Kieran Reeves was slightly startled by this version of Mega-Tokyo, or "Meta-Tokyo" as Jack referred to it. Apparently that had caught him by surprise as well for a few days.

The large animal feeders, like the one that they had landed in, were scattered around various places. The point was apparently that people couldn't get at the food, pets like dogs and cats could get at the lower part and birds could get at the higher level, thus meaning that birds could feed without being attacked and many animals could feed without people stealing the food.

Several other sights startled the Reeves brothers. Smoking had apparently gone out of fashion almost as soon as sir Francis Drake got back from America and tried to introduce it. Beer was illegal outside of pubs or restaurants, though it was perfectly acceptable to get drunk then wander round so long as you didn't cause any trouble.

There were shops who's purpose Kieran couldn't begin to guess at until Jack explained the few that he'd picked up in his short time here. Even those that he did recognise weren't selling what he was expecting them to.

They'd made their way through several streets and were approaching what Jack assured them was a cloths shop (though they were sceptical) when Jack suddenly stopped and indicated a large, heavy-duty lorry driving slowly along the road next to them. It was large, painted black and had a tinted wind-shield. On its side was a logo, taking up most of the available space. The logo seemed to consist of several different views of the Earth arranged in a circle around a larger one. The difference with this one was that a triangular blue crystal was set in the centre, taking up almost half the planet, with a capital 'W' glowing white in the centre of it.

Kieran was slightly worried that the crystal looked a lot like Zero's but with smaller triangles coming off the middle of each side.

"That's one of Terranew's lorries," Jack muttered to them as it passed. The three of them watched it go and were about to head off again when a car shot out from a junction, tried to turn with its wheels spinning madly and ending up running itself along the length of the truck, tearing away the heavy canvas sheet that was covering the side of the lorry and had the logo on it.

The car ground to a halt at the same time that the lorry did. A couple of police officers were already converging on the offending car. Jack though didn't seem to be interested in the car. His attention was firmly on the lorry. The driver had got out and was talking with one of the police officers.

Kieran followed Jack as he headed back to where the other people that had been in the lorry's cab and in the back made haste trying to pull the cover back into place. They just got it in place again as Kieran spotted what was inside.

A portal generator.

"Oh my…" Jack seemed to be unaware of them for a minute then snapped out of it. "We have got to get hold of that gear."

Kyle and Kieran looked at him, slightly startled.

"What? If we can then we keep it running whenever a portal opens and when Terranew tries to open the portal as well the effects will cancel each other out. The portal won't open."

"Alternatively we could just blow it up," Kieran suggested. "Hide in an alley so we can activate our armour without being seen, charge up to full, fire on it and teleport out before they even knew we were here."

Jack shook his head. "I'd prefer getting hold of it," he said, absentmindedly rubbing his chin. "Whatever we do though, we can't do it here. Let's get back to the others."

Chapter 5 – Road Rage

"You want us to go out already?" Adam sounded disappointed at the idea.

"We don't have time to argue about this kid. We go now and stand a good chance of capturing something that might tell us how to stop the Black Lands for good or at least stopping Terranew from getting at it. But we need to go now while we still know where it is."

"We just got back from the Black Lands once and you want us to go up against more of those monsters?" Zero was sounding incredulous now.

"Listen buddy, sometimes Terranew get the chance to open five portals within an hour on opposite sides of the city. Every time they do gives them one more chance to get at stronger body-plans for their guards to borrow. I have been working for years so far and the chance of stopping them this easily is one I will leap at, with or without your help."

Jack hadn't expected much. All of them had just been through a pretty gruelling situation and weren't quite ready to go through it again. He though had been living with this sort of situation for quite a while now and was getting used to the requirements of the lifestyle.

"I'm with you," X said. The Reploid had been wanting to get at some action for quite a while now, though probably not like this.

"Same here," Kyle said. Kieran nodded his agreement. "Besides if we can get hold of that gear it might help me with modifying the gravity well technology so that we can manage a crossover a lot easier."

Adam looked around, shrugged, then sighed. "I guess I'm in. I just hope we don't go up against any of those guards again."

"We probably will," Jack said. He then turned to face Zero. "And you?"

When Zero hesitated, X jumped on it. "Come on Zero. Are you telling me that you can go out hunting rogue Boomers for fun but can't handle these guys?"

"These guys are not Boomers," Zero retorted. "Boomers are simple to kill when you've had as much practise as I have. Some of these guys though make Sigma look like a stroll in the park and we haven't even met them that many times."

"So you can't take them then?" Kyle joined in the niggling eagerly. Jack wasn't sure but he got the impression that Kyle and the others had been waiting for this sort of situation for ages.

Zero looked around the room, glaring at everyone. "This is emotional blackmail," he muttered.

"Then we're in complete agreement," Kyle said. "We all help steal the generator and admit that you're willing to take on those guards."

Zero glared at him again, then shrugged. "What the hell," he muttered as he activated his armour. "So where are they?"

Jack glanced at the scanner on the wall. "Heading onto one of the Super-Highways. Looks like it's pretty clear right now so we should be OK." He frowned and tapped at the screen. "Uh oh."

"What?" Zero suddenly appeared at his shoulder.

"There's a teleport inhibitor active in that area. It'll hit us as soon as we teleport in. Under normal circumstances that would be fine, we would just have to run fast to get out. But if we try teleporting into it…"

"Not nice?"

"Terminal," Jack corrected him. "We'll have to rely on other means to catch up with them."

"All of us except Adam have got M.A.C.s," Kyle said.

Jack frowned. "That's either a badly designed computer or a water-proof coat."

Kyle groaned. "M.A.C. stands for Mobile Attack Cycle. It's stored in the same way as our armour until we need it. It's you I don't know about."

Jack grinned. "I've got something like that."

Trigger eyed the pair of vehicles in Jack's garage with a slight amount of trepidation. One of them had once been a streamline sports-car, probably of local make. It was a light shade of red and easily had room for five people on the seats.

The fact that it had an orange oval painted on the bonnet (looking remarkably like the crystal that was part of Jack's helmet), a high-density fusion engine that would have made Ford or Rover into trillionaires overnight if they could get hold of it and a pair of E-Busters behind the grill at the front were quite worrying. Various other James Bond and Knight Rider style tricks were built into it as well including traffic light controllers, a high-voltage security system, pursuit and super-pursuit modes, an advanced autopilot system and the ability to jump. It was also amphibious to judge from the tide mark around the sun-roof. The entire surface had apparently been redone in Reploid armour as well just for effect.

The motorbike that was next to it was slightly more worrying. While the car could hide itself when its weapons weren't needed, the Bike couldn't.

It was obviously a hover-bike of some kind, given the lack of wheels. There was a large engine strapped onto the back of it, boosters that folded out from below that and an aerodynamic design that would have startled most aircraft designers. Just below the wind-shield, embedded under a retractable cover, was a weapon which Jack referred to as a 'Plasma-Bolt', apparently a combination of X-Buster and grenade/ missile launcher. Two side-launching missile tubes (each equipped with dozens of self-replicating nano-warheads that could launch sideways then direct themselves forwards or backwards) and a tyre-slasher made up the weapons.

The point that the tyre-slasher was some kind of highly focussed, two metre long Z-Sabre, was only a minor point all things considered.

Various types of shielding, including cloaking, were fitted to both vehicles.

Xtreme was prodding at the car, apparently marvelling at the design (not to mention trying to touch-scan it so that he could learn some of its secrets). So far both Jack and his vehicles had proven to be unscannable to all of the other Reploids.

"Two E-Busters you say?" Xtreme said as he stood and transferred his attention to the Bike.

"Believe me, it wasn't easy getting the whole thing to work together."

Shades groaned. "You're almost as bad as Kyle. He's always tinkering with things."

"Maybe you're related," Zero joked.

Xtreme seemed to think of something, but X interrupted him before he could speak. "So which are you going to take?"

Jack seemed to consider. Out of all of them, he was the only one not wearing any armour right now. "Well we've already got the quality so I suppose that a little more quantity won't hurt. I'll take the Lo.R.E, then we can try to pass ourselves off as a biker gang."

"Lo.R.E.?" Xtreme cast a glance at him.

"Long-range Recon and Exploration vehicle," Jack said. "I picked it up a few years ago and I've been modifying it ever since." He climbed onto the hover-bike and there was a faint whine as the engine started up instantly.

"Just in case anyone was wondering; how am I going to get there," Trigger asked.

At Jack's questioning expression, Xtreme shrugged. "He hasn't got a M.A.C."

There was a pause while they considered, then Jack stood and walked over to one side of the garage. As with Kyle's lab, the walls were plastered with different components, bits and pieces and sheets of metal. The main difference was that while Kyle had enough funding, one way or the other, to keep all his gear in a lab so that it at least looked professional, Jack seemed to be a hobbyist and so couldn't keep it in a lab.

Just before he pulled something out from a pile, Jack turned back to face Trigger. "You've still got those crazy skate things haven't you?"

Trigger nodded and jumped into the air. In mid-jump he activated his roller-boots so that he skidded slightly when he landed.

Jack grinned and pulled a long piece of rope out of the pile. He lassoed one end round the Lo.R.E.'s engine, then handed the other end to Trigger. "How do you like skiing?"

Trigger grinned. "I like this idea."

Jack grinned back, threw his head back, and activated his armour.

Unlike his normal armour though this seemed to have been designed especially for the Lo.R.E. The helmet was based around the design of a motor-bike helmet, with a clear visor that slid up after the glow had faded from the rest of the armour. The whole thing had a more aerodynamic feel to it than the armour he had worn so far. There was even some kind of chain wrapped round his shoulder and hip several times like a bandolier. It was still the same gold colour as before though.

Trigger stared at him with everyone else, until another set of glows filled the room. Xtreme, X and Shades were glowing, their armour apparently updating itself. When the glow faded, Trigger almost laughed. Apparently the upgrade systems had liked the idea of the biker armour. His sensors informed him that the three of them were equipped with better communication gear with their M.A.C.s and a grapple weapon in the form of a long chain, hanging Indiana-Jones'-whip style from their waists.

"Wow!" Kyle exclaimed.

"Indeed," Jack said. "Now let's get going, quick."

"What about me," Neo called out plaintively from the doorway. He'd been standing there, watching them the whole time and now seemed to feel that he was going to miss out on the action.

Jack didn't seem to have time for him though. "Make sure no one breaks in and tidy up the repair gear in the living room. We may need it when we get back." He jumped onto the Lo.R.E. and the thing lifted itself a few centimetres off the floor. The other's brought their M.A.C.s out as well and jumped onto them.

"Let's hit the road," Jack said, sliding the visor back into place.

According to the tracker that 84 was following and Xtreme had managed to nab a copy of the frequency for, they were only about a mile behind the lorry that was heading up the 'super-highway'. The highway so far seemed to be about four lanes wide both ways, going over several gorges.

Trigger seemed to be enjoying himself far too much. He was on his roller-boots, still hanging onto the rope, about five metres behind 84 and the Lo.R.E. So far they'd been doing a steady hundred and fifty kilometres an hour down the highway and seemed to be getting away with it. The entire highway seemed to be deserted apart from them and the lorry.

Xtreme focused again on the tactical display on the M.A.C.'s screen. They were gaining rapidly on the lorry and so far didn't have any kind of plan for what to do when they caught up with it. The nearest they had was to stop the truck, disable the inhibitor and teleport out with the generator. Xtreme wasn't sure if they would be able to carry that much equipment with them when they tried to teleport.

As they rounded a corner of the highway, they caught sight of the lorry a hundred metres ahead. All of them slowed so that they were alongside each other.

"What are we going to do now," X called out.

84 stared at the lorry for a minute. "The source of the inhibitor field seems to be in the back with the generator. Right now I'd suggest getting onto it, taking out the guards, then looking for the inhibitor. With that out we can just teleport out. Just remember: if we can't get the generator intact, we can't let them keep it intact."

"Fine," Xtreme said. He's been wanting to try out this trick.

Pulling the chain off its hook at his waist, he shuffled a bit till he was standing on the M.A.C.'s seat. Trusting in his tactical computer to keep the thing driving in a straight line, he flicked the chain out, whip style, and was pleased when the grapple at the end embedded itself in the canvas that covered the back of the lorry.

Jumping into the air, he pulled himself rapidly along the chain, managing to make it up the whole length of the thing before he fell. Digging his toes and fingers into the back of the lorry, he watched as the chain coiled itself up and replaced itself at his waist. Grinning, he looked back at the others.

"Come on, it's easy!" His M.A.C. was still keeping steady with the lorry, about ten metres behind them.

He returned his attention to the lorry just in time to see a fist punch through the back of it and catch him fully in the face.

The force of the impact knocked him off the back, tearing pieces of canvas away with him. He was aware that the others were driving past him before he'd even hit the ground. The suspender-field that all of the bikes were generating to keep themselves off the ground buoyed him up for an instant, in which time something hard and metallic, made of lots of little metallic bits, shot out of nowhere, wrapped itself around his waist and pulled on him.

He found himself, when he could see clearly and had gotten over the shock of the sudden turn of events, having a piggy-back from Trigger. "Wha?"

"There are guards on the lorry," Trigger yelled back. "84 managed to grab you with his strike-chain as you went past. Now if you don't mind could you bring your M.A.C. over here so you can get off me?"

Xtreme nodded, then realised that his M.A.C. was already directing itself into position next to Trigger, who was still holding onto the rope. Leaping onto it, Xtreme tried to make sense of the information his sensors were providing him with.

In the few seconds since he'd been punched the guards had removed the canvas back of the lorry and transformed into their alternate forms. What was probably the one that had punched him looked like the high-speed Goblin that had attacked them before. All of the others were too far under the cover of the lorry to see properly except for one.

It looked like a cannon with legs. A central, cylindrical body had a shallow hole at one end, a single eye on top and three stumpy legs round the back. Two of the legs kept it steady horizontally while the third acted as a support to stop it falling forwards or backwards. As Xtreme watched, the hole filled with a red glow which shot out and hit Zero's M.A.C., which was knocked pretty badly by the impact. There were even scorch marks across the side of it from where it had taken the brunt of the shot.

Almost a second later the guard had shifted its aim to him and fired again. Xtreme managed to pull a wheelie and kicked the suspenders up to full power, deflecting the shot into the tarmac and leaving a large pothole.

Skidding from the force of the explosion, Xtreme just managed to dodge the next shot. "Return fire!"

The cannon at the front of his M.A.C. began to spit fire at the lorry. In response the cannon on the lorry began to waddle from side to side, still firing at them while dodging their shots.

Beside him, Xtreme noticed Trigger grasp the rope firmly in his left hand and push himself off to the right. Activating his T-Buster he fired off several shots before being pulled back behind 84 and his Lo.R.E.

Apparently realising that they were up against more than just a simple biker gang, one of the guards who hadn't transformed climbed out on top of the lorry, his jacket flapping wildly in the wind, his shades almost coming off at one point.

Xtreme didn't focus on him until it was almost too late. He was so intent on the guards that had transformed that he hardly even noticed the one that hadn't. When he did, the guard was already transforming into something large and spiky.

Pulling out his X-Buster, he fired off a medium charge shot, though by that time the guard had transformed and didn't even seem to notice the plasma bolt when it hit him.

He now resembled the creature that Trigger had fought just after they'd arrived in this universe. Its claws were polished though, to the point that they could probably have been used as mirrors, it you felt like getting that close to slicing yourself to bits. It still had two heads, though its eyeball head had a dark covering over it, presumably the remains of the guard's shades. It was covered in spikes that were red and brown, not to mention longer and tidier than the other creature's had been, as if the guard had been combing them in his spare time. Somehow this made it all the more terrifying.

Before Xtreme could even get off a second shot, the guard raised both arms and fired at them.

The twin explosions tore the road apart around them, throwing all of them around. Trigger lost hold of his rope and had to skate on his own to keep up with them until he could grab it again.

Thinking back to what he'd been told of how the creature had been defeated before, Xtreme took aim and fired at its mouth-head. Its mouth was open so by rights the shot should have gone straight in. What he hadn't counted on was something coming out at the same time.

Apparently Terranew had been playing around with whatever passed for the genetics of these creatures and tried cross-breeding them. Not only did this creature have the weapons of the creature that Trigger had fought, but also the spikes and tongue of the one that Kieran had fought. Now all they needed was for it to develop the fire-shooting capabilities of the one that he'd fought for them to be in real trouble.

84 had apparently thought the same thing and didn't intend to give it time to think of such things. Standing on his Lo.R.E. the same way that Xtreme had, he pulled the strike-chain off his shoulder, held it by one end, and flicked it out at the guard.

Xtreme thought for a moment that 84 might be trying to hook the chain onto the guard, a sure sign of a damaged mind. Instead, just before it would have hooked on, the chain flashed. Lightning seemed to run along its length, bright enough to cause lines to be burnt for an instant onto Xtreme's retina.

Estimating 20,000,000 Volts discharge

Damage to target: Uncertain

When the flashes had vanished from his sensors and he could see clearly again, he observed that parts of the guard were flickering in and out of sight while others seemed to have vanished altogether. Importantly one arm had vanished leaving a spike stump. The guard howled in pain, then laid down a pattern of fire right across the road with its remaining arm.

All of the Reploids were flung around, Trigger almost being flung over the side of the highway into the gorge that they were crossing at the time. Xtreme only just managed to keep himself on the M.A.C. and stay on the road.

He'd just settled himself back onto a steady path again when 84 unleashed a couple of dozen Nano-warhead SMART missiles. They jumped out sideways then shot forward, hitting the guard and the cannon-guard. Neither seemed to be particularly harmed by the attack.

The guard on the top of the lorry had to duck for an instant as they passed into a tunnel. Xtreme made use of it by kicking his thrusters up to a higher power level and driving off ahead. When he had the driver's cab in his sights, he fired off a couple of shots at it, trying to stop the lorry whilst it was in the tunnel.

He didn't get to see the results of the shots because the guard on top chose that point to take a swing at him with his claws. Xtreme barely managed to dodge the M.A.C. to one side in time and instead of loosing his head, lost part of his shoulder as the claws went through it.

Approximately 75% of left shoulder armour missing

Repair systems active…

Jamming his air-brakes on, he dropped back to join the rest of them.

As they came out of the end of the tunnel, the guard raised itself to a crouch again, then stopped, its mouth creasing into a grin.

Xtreme was slightly confused by this until he suddenly realised where he'd seen this situation before.

"Why've they stopped shooting," Shades yelled as he moved over to Xtreme.

"Why did the turbo-lasers stop shooting at the X-Wings on their trench run?" Xtreme had a very bad feeling about this and wasn't willing to look in case he was proven right.

"Because Vader was behind th…" Shades hesitated for an instant. "Oh, cr…"

The concussion from the missile that exploded in the midst of the Reploid group threw Xtreme off the edge of the highway into a gorge.

Shades managed to roll onto his side so that the force of the explosion pushed him into his seat while the suspenders fought to keep him from being pushed into the railings that marked the side of the highway.

They must have hidden someone at the end of the tunnel, he thought to himself, checking his rear sensors, then looking back just to make sure they weren't malfunctioning.

What was following them was, simply put, a tank. The only marking on it was the triangle and 'W' from the Terranew logo across the front. Heavy treads didn't seem to touch the floor as they spun, managing to maintain a speed of almost a hundred kilometres per hour while the green and black armour was apparently designed for better curves than a normal tank. Some kind of cannon was sitting on top of it, still smoking slightly from the shot it had fired that had knocked them all about.

Across its surface he could pick out several other weapons. Half of them seemed to be some design of X-Buster while the others were energy based weapons, apart from the pair of blades that stuck out the sides and were almost glowing as they vibrated. Shades didn't want to get on the wrong end of those.

Shades turned back to check the road just in time to see his brother shooting up the side of the valley, fly off the hillside and onto the highway, still firing at the lorry. He'd probably managed to kick the suspenders up to high power, slowing his decent until he reached the bottom and hit the thrusters to catch up with them.

Switching his air-brakes on for a second, Shades tried to get behind the tank, hoping to avoid its blades. Unfortunately it was more manoeuvrable than he'd expected and he only just managed to avoid running into its front end. He kicked his thrusters in, then was helped along by the tank shooting his engine. The diagnostic equipment said that it hadn't taken any serious damage, though the jolt had felt like the engine had been ripped off.

Looking back, he saw that the various X-Buster type weapons were starting to glow, as if charging up. Waiting for just the right time, Shades settled himself in line between the tank and lorry. Just as his sensors told him the tank was about to fire, he dodged to the side, meaning that the shot missed him but hit the back of the lorry.

Deciding to try for Xtreme's trick, Shades revved his engine and dived off the highway.

84 watched Shades shoot over the edge of the highway and hoped that the Reploid knew what he was doing. He himself had been trying to get a good targeting lock with the SMART missiles whilst Trigger kept whizzing back and forth trying to avoid being hit by the tank's weapons and getting in the way.

Skidding over to one side, he just managed to force Trigger to lag far enough behind that he could get a clear shot. The SMART missiles jumped out, then flew backwards, striking the tank straight on.

As far as he could tell the explosions caused no real damage to the tank. It barely shuddered as they struck.

Trying to locate some weak point in the situation, 84 locked onto the Goblin-guard that was standing on the back of the lorry. He hadn't actually done any harm so far, though 84 now picked out the headset that the guard was wearing, presumably calling for reinforcements.

Locking onto the guard, 84 fired with all of his Lo.R.E.'s weapons. The guard managed to dodge most of the shots, but a couple of SMART missiles that were hooked into his tactical computer and could predict what would happen managed to find their target.

Swerving to avoid the sudden shower of guard, 84 came up with a plan.

"Trigger," he yelled. "I need to try something! Get onto the tank and see what you can do from there!"

Trigger looked troubled, then nodded. Leaping into the air, he pushed backwards and deactivated his roller boots. He hit the tank's turret feet first and slid down to the main body. There he began to fire, not at the tank but at the lorry.

Ignoring him, and hoping that the kid would be OK, 84 pulled the best stunt he could, pushing his Lo.R.E.'s engine up to full power, engaging the boosters and shot off the highway and vanished over a hill within seconds.

Zero watched 84 go, hoping that he knew what he was doing.

He himself had been trying to get a clear shot at the generator, more difficult than it seemed given the way he was being force to weave back and forth across the highway.

He was slightly annoyed at the way that these guys kept getting the drop on them. Right now he was getting steadily more and more angry at not being able to hit them.

Eventually he got sick of being annoyed. Leaping into the air, he did a backwards flip off the M.A.C. and landed on the tank. As he left it he removed his M.A.C. back into storage so that it wouldn't get in anyone's way.

He landed right in front of one of the energy cannons. With lightning reflexes he managed to dodge it as it fired, then brought his Z-Sabre round and tried to chop the cannon off.

The plasma blade managed to just about touch the surface, then bent round into a tight loop so that no matter what Zero tried it wouldn't actually hit the cannon.

Magnetic field, he reasoned. Must be powerful to deflect a Z-Sabre. I'm surprised it hasn't pulled my armour apart. 'Course with that sort of field it would be able to deflect a Z-Buster shot as well.

Realising that any further attack would have to be hand-to-hand, Zero deactivated his Z-Sabre and put it away. Scrambling up to the top of the turret, Zero located the main hatch.

Just as he reached for it, he saw something shoot up the side of a gorge and onto the highway behind them. Looking up, he watched as Shades lined up his M.A.C.'s cannon and fired.

Rolling back down the turret to avoid the shot, Zero landed next to Trigger.

"What's going on back there?" Trigger spoke out of the corner of his mouth rather than turn his attention away from the lorry.

"Shades' just appeared behind the tank. He's attacking it from there."

Zero noted a lull in Shades' attack. Taking advantage of this he turned, intending to climb back onto the turret…

The entire tank glowed for an instant beneath them in the same way that their M.A.C.s and armour glowed when being brought into or out of storage.

Zero didn't have time to be shocked at this as the tank faded out of existence around him to be replaced by some kind of hover-bike, dead centre from where the tank had been, between Zero and Trigger.

Zero hit the ground rolling, as did Trigger. He rose to his feet again as quickly as he could to find that the group of lorry and hover-bikes was already vanishing round the next corner.

"Damnation," Zero yelled. He brought his M.A.C. back into existence and vaulted onto it. "Get on kid, we've got some catching up to do."

"That glow looked the same as what happens when we bring our armour out," Trigger commented as he slid into place behind Zero.

"Yeah," Zero said. From what 84 had said when he'd been telling them about what was going on, Terranew had access to Boomer technology amongst other things. None of them had realised that this might mean they also had Reploid merge technology as well, though so far none of the guards had shown signs of using it.

They caught up with Shades after only a minute, to find that the hover-bike he was following seemed to have the advantage. Amongst other things its weapons were apparently as good forwards as they were backwards and the rider was making full use of this.

Plasma bolts kept shooting back at them, missing Shades and them, making Zero wonder who this guy was firing at.

WAZ-A: Zero?

Zero frowned at the message that popped up on his internal HUD. He was starting to feel weird, as if he was seeing and feeling what someone else was seeing and feeling. But it wasn't quite like that because unlike being drunk (and after the party where three of the Knight Sabres had spiked the Punch at the same time, he knew about being drunk) the experience was distinct, though still faint enough to be confusing.

He tried to concentrate on it, then realised what he was seeing. He was actually getting a copy of the sensor data from the hover-bike rider that was firing at them.

Focusing on this, he tried to access the rider's tactical systems in the same way he would those of another Reploid that he was linked to. What worried him was the ease with which his systems managed this, actually responding just as fast at accessing the external systems as they did his own.

WAZ-A: It is you then…

WAZ-A: No one else could have done that

Zero's frown deepened. Had his attempts been noticed?

Realising what was happening on the borrowed HUD, Zero yelled a warning. "Shades! Dodge!"

Shades skidded sideways, barely avoiding the Plasma Bolt that shot past him and would quite likely had totally disabled his M.A.C. had it hit. Certainly it would have damaged the paintwork if the way the wall of the canyon that they were going down exploded was anything to go by.

Deciding to take the initiative, Zero decided to respond. Instinctively he found himself going through a simple command sequence that brought up the ability to transmit a message.

WAZ-Z: Who are you?

WAZ-A: You don't know do you?

WAZ-Z: I wouldn't be asking if I did

WAZ-A: Why are you helping these hopeless cases?

WAZ-Z: They're not hopeless

WAZ-A: Compared to what we could be…

WAZ-Z: Do you expect me to work with you?

WAZ-A: Have you forgotten so much? What do you think you were made for if not to fight alongside me?

Zero would have responded, but at that instant noticed something up ahead.

The lorry was rounding a corner in the highway a second or so ahead of them. Just round the corner, where they would never see it coming, was an ambush.

As the lorry went round the corner Zero's sensors lit up again at the massive energy discharge of 84's Strike-chain. Obviously the Reploid had driven on ahead and lain in wait. The strike-chain wasn't aimed directly at the lorry though. It was stretched across between 84 who was on one hill and the cliff face on the far side.

The lorry's cab windows were shattered by the high-voltage discharge before they even touched the chain itself. The driver and anyone in there with him would have been fried before the glass touched them. As it drove past, 84 detached the grapple and reeled in the strike-chain, tearing part of the cab off with it.

A hundred metres down the cliff face the lorry ground to a halt, sparks flying from it. X and Xtreme just about managed to skid to a halt ahead of it while Shades and Zero came to rest twenty metres behind them. The hover-bike that they had been chasing accelerated off into the distance and vanished round the next corner.

Leaping off the M.A.C. and shunting it into storage, Zero brought out his Z-Sabre and Z-Buster, realising that this could well be a vital battle that they couldn't afford to loose.

84 checked the area, detecting six guards within the wreckage of the lorry. Whoever was on the hover-bike was making good their escape, despite being a match for them from what he'd seen.

Leaping off his Lo.R.E. he dumped it into storage. Grabbing hold of the end of his Strike-Chain he whipped it round, feeling it slid frictionlessly off his armour, and flicked it out towards the large guard that he'd already tried to fry.

Sending close to thirty million volts of electricity through it, 84 almost grinned beneath his visor as what remained of it was put under enough stress to simply fall part the way the rest of it had.

Withdrawing the Strike-Chain, 84 scanned again. More by accident than design, he'd managed to take out one of the guards that had been hiding in the back of the lorry.

He realised the main problem they faced a nanosecond before it made itself know.

The Goblin-guard had apparently not been harmed by the crash and before any of them had had a chance to recover, performed a mad rush back and forth, thumping all of the Reploids and sending them flying.

84 landed heavily, skidding into the cliff face that had been several metres behind him a second or so before. Glancing round, his sensors tried to lock onto the guard while the others untangled themselves from the wreckage.

Sighing to himself, he tried not to move. Angelo was probably too busy to help right now, so it was up to them. That would mean taking risks.

"Armour Unlock, EXP-1, Code: six ten Charlie Break Nine."

The first of his experimental armours unlocked itself, breaking down the safety values he'd put round it to stop himself activating it by accident. As the glow obliterated his view of the area, the guard took another run at the others.

When his view returned he could already feel his strength increasing. Standing up required almost no effort as the Slip-Field cut in, removing all the effects of friction that would normally affect him. As he managed to settle onto his feet his speeded up sensors spotted the guard taking a run at him.

He didn't even flinch when the guard hit the Slip-Field and rebounded of it. Turning slowly to avoid spinning himself into a whirlwind, he focussed on his attacker.

In what must have been more of a blur than the guard became, 84 took a run at the guard, sticking out a fist and catching the guard on the chin before he could dodge.

Armour Efficiency: 98%

Motor Functions & Nearby Systems: 96% and falling

Estimated safe usage of EXP-1: 3 minutes

Repair Systems Active…

84 came to an abrupt halt, leaving the guard to fly on ahead of him and hit the wall. Before his enemy could get up, 84 brought his E-Buster out and nailed him with it.

The guard screamed, once, then began to dissolve like the other had.

Default Armour, 84 thought to himself. Instantly his armour began to rebuild itself, becoming the armour he had first used. Spinning round, he locked onto the nearest guard and began to pump rapid-fire shots into him.

This turned out to be the cannon, for a few seconds after which it began to disintegrate.

These guys must have been badly knocked around by the crash, 84 guessed. He turned to face the next guard, just in time to see it leap at him.

This guard had taken the form of some kind of tentacled thing with claws running along the inside edges of each tentacle and something that looked like an arc-welder at the centre of its tentacles. 84 didn't get a better look then this as at this point he activated all six of his Time Shear Blades and spun rapidly, cutting the guard to shreds.

Being sure not to cut himself up on his own weapons, 84 looked around again to see the rest of the team each taking on different guards. Trigger seemed to be in the worst situation, so 84 jumped and Air-Dashed over to him.

Trigger was stuck under the guard which, though small, seemed to be quite heavy. It was sitting on his chest, with some kind of Spider-like legs stuck into Trigger's sides. 84 wasn't able or willing to access Trigger's diagnostic systems from several metres away, but he could guess that Trigger would be laid out for a while at least.

The only odd part in the situation was Trigger himself, who in between sessions of beating at the guard with his fists, was almost rolling round uncontrollably with laughter or crying buckets and screaming in anguish.

Guessing that the guard must have gotten past Trigger's watchdog subroutines that prevented tampering with his emotions, 84 whipped out his E-Buster and took careful aim at the medicine-ball sized body of the guard. Selecting a low powered shot, he fired, hoping that the guard's size meant less defences.

Apparently it didn't. The guard wobbled furiously from the force of the blast, then turned a multi-faceted eye towards 84 and shot out several more legs from underneath its body.

One of these speared him through the waist, though he dodged the rest and Point-Defence cannons took out some. Wincing slightly, 84 also found himself starting to laugh.

Before it could get too far, the PD Cannons activated again, tearing the leg to pieces in seconds and reducing it to a ten centimetre stump. Pulling it out, 84 activated his Blades again and took a flying leap over Trigger and the guard, feet drawn up above his knees so that the blades coming upwards from his knees were pointing down and sliced through the guard.

As he landed, he felt something within him give out.

All Emotional Routines/ subroutines/ watchdogs: Inoperative

Reinitialising functions: 325 seconds and counting

Collapsing down, 84 felt his control over his emotions slip away, leaving him feeling liberated, though very uncertain about himself.

Beside him Trigger had broken down into tears and was simply sitting there, ignoring the legs still sticking into his chest and the creature that was steadily falling apart on the other end of them. Unable to control himself, 84 began to weep as well, simply venting his feelings, though mainly directing them at the fact that he was being forced to kill, something he'd always tried to avoid.

With the last shred of self-control he had, he deactivated his armour. As synthetic systems were replaced by organic ones and the programmed emotions were replaced by flesh, blood and hormonal ones, he felt himself getting a certain measure of control over his mind again.

Taking a deep breath to clear his mind, he stood and reached into the pocket of the denim jacket that he'd slipped on before they'd gone down to the garage. As he did he slipped his fingers round the casing of the Magnum that was in there.

Turning round as fast as he could, Jack blinked the tears out of his eyes. The barrel of the Magnum focused on the head of the guard that was sitting on top of Zero, which had taken the form of some kind of huge brown/ gold serpent. Strangely Zero didn't actually seem to be struggling.

Not giving himself time to hesitate, let alone aim properly, Jack pulled the trigger, feeling the shot pull hard against his wrist as the gun fired.

The guard was hit in the back of the head, though didn't seem to notice as the bullet went right through its skin. Jack didn't wait for its reaction and took a running leap at the cab of the lorry. He hit the door and turned just in time to see the shot take effect.

The guard was still on top of Zero, though seemed to be trying to scream though a set of vocal cords that didn't allow anything better than a hiss. It was also having trouble with the fact that its head was starting to melt, along with part of its body. As Jack watched from his vantage point the process accelerated, so that the entire guard was a rapidly spreading pool of near liquid bio-matter in seconds.

Zero didn't seem to notice this going on above him and was simply lying there. The others seemed to notice though. As the pool spread, one of the other guards put his foot in it, literally. Almost instantly Xtreme's opponent began to melt as well, this time from the foot up.

Xtreme himself seemed to be horrified by the process that was rapidly absorbing his enemy and took several steps back to avoid the pool. Shades didn't notice it until he'd already stepped in it though. Fortunately his armour protected the few organic components he had in him that would have been affected by the virus that was busy tearing apart the guards that touched the pool and began to dissolve into it.

Within a matter of less than a minute all of the guards had totally dissolved into the steaming pool of bio-matter that was stretched across several lanes of the super-highway and still spreading.

Thirty seconds later, the virus killed itself off, causing the primordial soup to solidify itself into something like melted and re-hardened cheese. The others, apart from Trigger, pulled themselves out of it, breaking chunks off their legs and feet as they went. Trigger was still whimpering, his emotional control systems apparently having not come back online.

Jack walked over to him, wincing slightly as the hardened soup beneath his feet cracked and crunched. Reaching Trigger, he pulled the kid out of the soup and tried to get him to stand up straight. When he continued to collapse, Jack reactivated his armour.

Interfacing with Trigger's dataport, 84 linked his repair systems into the kid's. Concentrating for a minute, he brought his emotional routines back online.

"How do you feel?"

Trigger seemed to get control of himself quite quickly all things considered. "Worse than I felt when I had that hangover this morning."

84 grinned at him, patted him on the back, then turned to check the others. Everyone was either standing or helping someone else to stand by now. Even Zero was on his feet, though still covered in hardened soup. The Maverick Hunter seemed to be more confused than the rest of them.

Stamping over to him, 84 put a reassuring hand on Zero's arm. "How are you?"

Zero looked up at him, then glanced down at himself. "I dunno. One minute I'm being hit by that speed-freak, when I get over that I find a large snake sitting on me. That's the easy part. The hard part is that the next thing I remember is waking up covered in solid gunk." He looked round at the highway. "What is this stuff anyway?"

"Believe it or not, it's the remains of the guards." He deactivated his armour and pulled out the Magnum again, sliding one of the bullets out of the casing and holding it up to the light. The bullet head was silver coloured, though there were white and black lines that roved back and forth across the surface like wires in a circuit. "There's a virus in this thing that breaks down just about any organic structure into something like this," he said taking a swipe at a pile of soup with his foot.

Zero seemed to consider, then reached up and gingerly touched the soup that had caked itself across his face.

"Don't worry," Jack said. "If I'd designed it to affect Reploids I'd be in a pretty nasty state wouldn't I? The only parts of you that it can affect are buried deep inside you, protected by several layers of armour." He turned and looked at the lorry. "But right now, I think we'd probably better be getting what we came for."

He'd taken a couple of steps towards the wreck of the lorry when there came the sound of tank tracks from down the highway. Activating his armour 84 spun, just in time to see the cannon on top of the tank that had been following them before, open fire, a red beam of energy, maybe two metres wide striking the lorry straight on.

Shades barely had time to bring his Proto-shield up to defend himself from the explosion that tore the lorry and the generator to pieces. Super-heated wreckage pinged and whined off his shield and armour as the shockwave from the explosion tore over him. Beneath his feet the soup was torn to bits, flaking off and being blown away.

Adjusting his footing slightly to get a better grip with the treads on his armoured boots, Shades slipped in a loose patch of soup. The explosion seemed to be less of an explosion by this time and more of a continuous shockwave that tore at him and whipped him off his feet the instant it had the chance.

Flung backwards, Shades found himself jammed against the cliff-face that provided a border for the highway, Proto-shield stuck uselessly at his side.

Eventually the force of the explosion died away and Shades slid down to the ground, exhausted by recent events.

It was only a few seconds later that he realised that the tank would have a clear shot at them all right now.

Looking up, he saw the tank just as it went round the corner in the highway again, hiding itself from view with the cliff-face.

Getting slowly to his feet, Shades looked round at the others. They were all slowly getting to their feet as well, in various positions along the highway. X seemed to have been flung the furthest, and was almost twenty metres down the road, apparently unhurt by the experience.

Staggering slightly, Shades headed over to Jack, who had removed his armour and was looking at the wreckage of the lorry. A massive hole had been burnt straight through it, as if someone had taken some kind of drilling equipment and gone straight into the lorry and the cliff. The hole was totally black inside, but Shades' Radar vision told him that it was almost six hundred metres deep and that the sides had been heat-welded in place by the force of the weapon.

"What kind of weapon was that?" Xtreme had come up on the other side of the lorry and was staring at the hole as well.

"That," Jack said, "was a Guyver's Mega-Smasher weapon. Believe me, if any of us had been in the way, we'd have been vaporised in an instant. The generator certainly was."

Off in the distance, several kilometres down the highway, Shades' sensors detected something the size of a tank using a Reploid teleport system and vanishing into the sky in a black beam.

Chapter 6 – Cooling down

Lunch was a welcome event after the trials of the day. Kyle was finding it hard to believe that it was in fact only a couple of days since he'd woken up in bed with Linna, having been sent a message from his own future. He was finding it harder to believe that when they'd walked in here it had been six hours according to the clock since he'd woken up and had to go out against a group of Terranew scientists with a funny idea of the rules of golf.

They'd all decided to eat out for this meal. There had been a slight amount of confusion about various details, such as Neo's cloths, but eventually they'd all found something decent to wear and found a suitable restaurant to eat at.

"That was incredible," he said, putting a cup down and wiping a coffee mark off his lip. "I can't remember the last time I had a meal like this."

"That's because we don't normally go out like this," Kieran said from the opposite side of the table. "We normally get roped into a party with the Knight Sabres, and you know how those generally end up."

Meaningful and slightly embarrassed glances were exchanged across the table. Zero and Kyle got the worst of it. After all, after one of their first parties with the lovely ladies that called themselves the Knight Sabres, Kyle had ended up in bed with Linna wondering what he hadn't done and Zero had lost his shirt to his girlfriend. Admittedly three of the Knight Sabres had spiked the punch during that party without checking to see if anyone else had done so and Kyle had won Zero's shirt back in the next game of Strip Poker (then held it hostage in the middle of an argument the next day), but it was still a pretty touchy subject.

"Sound's interesting," said Jack, who Kyle was starting to suspect was better at reading people than he was at tinkering. "Maybe I should see one of those one day."

They all exchanged a glance that said quite clearly that no one was to tell him to avoid the punch until it was too late.

Jack seemed to have caught onto the look though. "But maybe I'll put myself in as the official driver rather than risk the consequences."

"Yeah, then some of us might end up in the right bed," X said, studiously avoiding looking at Kyle while making it totally obvious that Kyle was the focus of his attention.

Jack frowned at this, then shook his head and smiled. "Unless you should choose not to." He signalled to a waitress that they'd finished, then stood and directed them all towards the bar area.

Settling themselves across an entire section of the bar, Jack began to order drinks for them. Apparently though he had part ownership of a pub, he chose to not go there whenever possible as it attracted attention to the fact that he was part owner. Apparently he'd set it up without the original owners actually realising it and wasn't keen to make a point of it.

As they sat there, drinking, Jack made small talk for a few minutes, before the conversation turned inevitably back to the subject of differences between their universes and this one (or in Jack's case the other universes he'd lived in at various times).

"This place is pretty weird," Kyle said. "You've got giant bird feeders, smoking doesn't exist…"

"Beer's good," Neo commented, downing some of his.

"And there's no real bad-guys."

"Bad guys?" Jack leaned forwards to star at him past Neo.

"The only universes I've been to are Anime or Manga ones," Kyle explained. "They always have something happening in them like Genom who are straight out bad guys and some pretty fantastic gear to go with them. Here they've got us."

"And Terranew," Jack said, tipping his head back and downing most of his drink. "You have to remember though that the huge vast majority of universes don't even have anything like Manga in them. In fact most don't have Humans in them, which threw Terranew off balance a couple of times. Just be glad this isn't one of those universes."

Neo nodded. "I've visited universes that were pretty boring compared to this one. Some of them the only thing that actually exists is a single star. Sometimes they've already reached Heat-Death point and effectively ended. The exciting ones are what you have to watch out for, likes the ones where the rock beneath your feet sings and the stars dance a rumba. Humans wouldn't stand a chance of evolving in some of those and even I got totally confused by them."

The others tried to take in the idea of stars doing a conga round the sky in time to the ground beating out a tempo. "I think I'll need a few more drinks to handle that idea," Kieran said.

"I needed a few just to stay sane," Neo said taking another drink from his glass. He then tried to straighten up, blinked a couple of times, and shook his head. "I think this is going to my head."

"Then stop drinking it," Kyle said. "You've probably never had to deal with the idea of alcohol without being able to magic it out of your bloodstream like the rest of us."

"I have," Neo said, his expression of wounded pride slightly ineffective as it took two attempts to aim at Kyle's face and even then he only managed to get as close as his left ear. "Not for a couple of thousand years admittedly, but I have. I'm just not quite as used to it now as the rest of you."

"Rest of you," Jack said gloomily. "I've tried to get drunk, but something in my armour stops me from managing, even when it's not active."

Kyle considered this. "I think your armour is a bit different from ours," he decided.

"Yeah well," Jack said sitting forward, "it does have its compensations."

"Like what?" Kyle tried to imagine never being able to get drunk again. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

"I've never lost at Strip Poker yet," Jack said, grinning so much like a maniac that Kyle started to wonder if all that stuff about not being able to get drunk was true.

Before he could voice his fears though, Jack downed the rest of his glass and headed over to one of the snooker tables. Kyle frowned, then wondered over after him, taking a refilled drink with him.

He found Jack laying out the balls in what looked like a totally random pattern across the table, different shades from what he was used to except for the black and white ones but not unusual beyond that. Several people came over to watch as Jack arranged ever ball with what looked like random casualness but Kyle guessed to be mathematical precision.

Eventually Jack seemed to be satisfied. Picking up a cue, he came round and stood next to Kyle at one corner of the table.

"Black ball," he indicated the ball sitting at the far end of the table in between the blue and pink ones, "in this pocket," he jabbed a finger at the pocket next to them. Kyle quickly glanced across the table, seeing that there were at least three balls directly in the way, not to mention the pair that were 'guarding' the black ball itself.

"That's impossible," someone commented.

Jack merely smiled and pulled some Yen out of a jacket pocket, laying them on the side of the table. He then looked expectantly at the man.

There was a moment of silence as the watchers considered what might happen. Kyle was almost sure that this guy was going to stick out, until the man stepped forward and laid twenty Yen next to Jack's.

Jack looked down at it, then looked around just in case. As he leaned down and began to line up the cue, Kyle whispered at him, "I'm with that guy. You can't make this shot."

Jack stopped halfway into his stoop. His expression froze for an instant, then cleared. "Your beliefs are irrelevant, I am empowered by my own." He nodded decisively, and leaned down, lining up his cue.

Squinting along the length of it at the white ball, Jack drew it back. Kyle followed the cue and realised that Jack wasn't even trying to aim at the black ball.

Jabbing the cue forward sharply, Jack hit the white ball. Quickly the cue was withdrawn as the white ball hit a red ball, which bounced off into one pocket. The white ball continued along till it hit a brown ball and started that rolling till it hit a green ball. At this point the white ball knocked two red balls apart, while the brown ball continued on to the back end of the table where it bounced off and hit the pink ball.

The pink ball didn't get a chance to roll too far because it was intercepted by the white ball which ricocheted off into the black ball. The black ball bounced into the blue ball just as the green ball got in the way, meaning that the black ball was knocked back with twice as much force. It proceeded to head down to the far end of the table, bouncing off no fewer than three other balls, knocking all of them into the holes before finally landing itself in the pocket next to them.

There was a few seconds of silence, then Kyle swore softly under his breath. "Should have known it…" He tried to run the calculations for that trick in his head, and found himself floundering in angles, velocities, values of friction, momentum and half a dozen other things.

"You should indeed," Jack said, sliding the money on the table off into his hand. The man who's money it had been glared slightly at him but didn't seem to want to make a point of it. "I've been pulling shots like that probably since before you were born."

Kyle looked sceptical. "How old are you?"

"How old do I look?"

Kyle shrugged. "Twenty five?"

Jack's smile widened. "I'm forty one."

Kyle stared at him, trying to fit the missing years onto this person. He'd guessed that Jack was only slightly older than he was. Now it turned out that he was almost twice Kyle's age.

"I'm only twenty two myself," Kyle said.

Jack looked at him carefully. "You look it as well. Are you sure you've got Reploid armour hidden somewhere in there?"

"I only got it a couple of years ago. If it does stop me from aging then it probably hasn't had time to have much of an effect yet."

Jack shrugged. "Could well be. I have been wearing this armour for the best part of thirty five years."

Kyle frowned and the pair of them headed back for the bar, leaving some confused stares to follow them as those that had been within hearing range of the conversation wondered what it had all been about.

"I could get to like this place," Neo was commenting as they returned. "There's a certain sense to it that reminds me of jFentla." He seemed to consider. "I think it's probably something to do with the woodwork. They went in for some crazy sculptures on that world as well." He indicated the corners of the ceiling where carved faces alternately smiled or leered at them.

"Don't believe it for an instant," Jack said. "The only reason those are there is as a remnant from the Neo-Nazi purges during the Third World War. There are CCTV cameras hidden behind them that allow people in hiding to check whether it's safe to come out rather than having to rely on the sound of everyone leaving. They just needed an excuse to hide the cameras behind."

The others looked up at the cameras in a different light. Indeed Kyle noticed that there was a certain something which suggested that the eyes weren't of the same material as the rest of the faces.

"You really know how to put a roadblock across someone's train of thoughts," Neo commented to Jack after a couple of minutes silence.

"You really know how to get through alcohol when someone else is paying," Jack said pointedly. "Come on, let's get back to my place before you try to bankrupt me."

Kyle shivered slightly as they left the warmth of the restaurant and came out into the cool afternoon. Somehow they'd managed to string lunch and drinks out over a couple of hours and the sun was noticeably lower than it had been before.

Jack glanced around a couple of times, then pointed to the right. As they all turned that way he turned left and headed off down the road. Frowning, Kyle looked back at him, then considered. Apparently the alcohol did have some effect on Jack as he'd pointed them, deliberately, the wrong way.

Eventually they reached Jack's house. Though the inside had obviously been well lived in, the outside showed enough signs of wear and tear that Kyle wondered how often Jack actually used the front door. Certainly he never seemed to go out the back door if the metre high grass that took up most of it was anything to go by.

Once Jack had unlocked the bolts that kept the door shut they filed in. What looked like the bare bones of an X-Buster stood next to the door with an umbrella standing up in it while various design of robotic or Boomer fingers or claws screwed to a piece of wood served as a coat rack. Jack refrained from putting his jacket on there, choosing to keep it on, while Kyle and the others ignored it and put theirs with their gear.

"What kind of guy collects Boomer fingers as coat hooks?" Adam had of course forgotten a coat altogether for this journey and so was shivering slightly.

"The kind that can't be bothered to buy a proper coat hook and has funny ideas about souvenirs," Kieran whispered at him. "I'm starting to worry about our host."

Though it was only about three o'clock, most of them were exhausted all ready. Jack had managed to collapse across one sofa and was simply staring up at the ceiling. Zero grabbed another sofa to himself and found the TV remote hidden behind one of the cushions. Jack looked round when Zero began to channel-hop then closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep.

Kyle looked round the room as the rest of the team, still recovering from lunch and the morning's exertions, settled themselves to watch Zero channel-hop and yell at him if he didn't stop when they thought he should.

Kyle shook his head and went over to his bag. Pulling a datapad out of it, he began to look over the schematics for some of the new armours that he'd been designing.

He'd barely got the information up and settled himself on the floor against the wall when Adam came and sat next to him, apparently trying to be interested in what was on the pad. Kyle tried to ignore the fact that he had an audience and carry on with his designs.

He'd already been working on ideas for upgrading the M.A.C. into a new version. The one he had was fine of course, but could do with some work. For an instant he considered asking Jack if he could have the specs for the SMART missiles and their launchers.

Just as he began to move to get up and ask though, Adam's head lolled against Kyle's shoulder and he began to snore softly.

Oh boy, Kyle thought. That's me sorted for the rest of the afternoon.

Jack woke late in the evening, just as the rest of the Maverick Hunters fell asleep. From next to the door Kyle gave a one-shouldered shrug in an attempt to convey his feelings about his situation without dislodging Adam.

Jack grinned at him and headed into the kitchen. Long ago he'd mastered the art of falling asleep at a few seconds notice and waking up ready for action at even less notice. Going from being sound asleep to full wakefulness at the first sign of trouble had ruined the few attempts he'd had at a relationship, one of the reasons he'd never gotten round to settling anywhere.

What little washing up there had been from breakfast had been done at breakfast before they went down to the cellar. The cramped kitchen didn't have much in the way of reasonable facilities for cooking, but Jack had learnt to make the most of them.

After a couple of minutes there was a scuffling sound from the living room and Jack stuck his head round the door in time to see Kyle get out from under Adam's head. The kid hung there for a second, then slumped sideways till his head bounced on the carpet. After a brief pause his steady snoring began again, apparently undisturbed by the change in angle from nearly vertical to horizontal.

Kyle grimaced and staggered into the kitchen in the slow walk of someone who's legs have gone numb and are suddenly trying to make up for the lack of work. "That probably wasn't kind," he commented as he closed the door to the living room and settled himself on a stool.

"Yeah well, you're here so you might try helping to cook dinner."

Kyle glanced at him as a chopping board with potatoes on it was pushed in his direction. "Just cut them into wedges," Jack said. "You should get about four or six out of them."

Kyle swivelled round on the stool and picked up the knife that had been left on the board. The knife in Jack's hand became a blur as it moved along a cucumber, slicing it into paper-thin pieces. "I didn't realise that you could move that fast."

Jack glanced up at him whilst he carried on cutting without missing a beat. "You might be one day. I've grown up with this armour and I think some parts of it actually improve me physically even when I'm not wearing it." In a blur he moved the cucumber into a bowl and began to work on some tomatoes.

Kyle shook his head as he began to cut the potatoes up, slowly and carefully. "I don't think I can move that fast even in my armour."

"Apparently my armour is a more advanced design than yours."

Kyle looked at Jack out of the corner of his eye. There hadn't been any gloating in his voice, there wasn't a trace of anything that suggested that they were anything other than equals. Would I be like that in his situation?

Kyle had got through one potato by the time Jack had worked his way through six tomatoes and was washing the cucumber. Trying to speed up, he tried to start up some kind of conversation as well. "So what do you do normally?"

"Soldier of Fortune normally," Jack said. "Though right now I'm tired of having to turn down people's jobs because I don't agree with their ideals. The problem there is that the kind of people I would choose to work for don't choose people like me to work for them. What about you?"

Kyle shrugged. "Most of the time I work as a scientist. I've been researching Reploid technology since as long as I could. My Grandfather really got me started when he found X and Zero and started off the Maverick Wars. My Grandmother was forced to go into hiding. Her daughter was as well to protect her from Genom. Eventually she met my dad and Kieran and I were the result."

Jack shrugged. "I never had a family except the rather dangerous version at the orphanage. Even if you lost some of them at least you know who yours are."

Kyle nodded, certain that he'd been meaning to ask Jack something about his family…

"Have you travelled to many alternate universes?"

The question caught Kyle off-guard for a minute. "A few. To be honest, the first time it happened it was more by accident than anything. I got struck by lightning and jumped into an alternate universe. The latest was probably the best one yet though. Couple of months ago I started getting these nightmares, there was a number in them though, gravity well calculations. I took the rest of the team, and Katy Bonne by accident, through to the universe to try and save someone. Worked as well."

"How'd you save 'em?"

"Largely by totally trashing Genom."

"You trashed Genom?"

"I basically went into their offices, hacked into their secure files and sent a copy to lots of people all over the world. Within minutes Genom's stock was falling and they were facing massive legal problems. It's been almost a month and I doubt they've yet finished dealing with the first of the court cases."

Jack frowned, but was silent for a few minutes while Kyle carried on chopping Potatoes.

"And have you done that in your universe?"

It was Kyle's turn to frown now. "No."

"You live in a universe with Genom in it, Genom makes everyone's lives trouble, why haven't you?"

Kyle stopped chopping the Potatoes and seemed to think for a few minutes. "I guess," he began then stopped. "If I had to rationalize it then I would say that they haven't done half of that stuff yet so they wouldn't be in nearly as much trouble as they were in that universe."

"And if you were being honest?"

Kyle shot a glance at Jack who'd got up to get a pair of glasses out of the cupboard. "I suppose that I've just watched so much Anime stuff that the idea of taking Genom on like that and finishing them so quickly just doesn't feel right."

Jack smiled vaguely at him and shook his head as if admiring the amazing logic of the statement.

Kyle finished off the last of the potatoes and pushed them over to Jack. Before Jack could pick them up what looked like a miniature lightning bolt appeared in mid-air above the chopping board, wriggled its way a few centimetres sideways crackling as it went, then vanished. As it moved it seemed to create a piece of paper where it had been.

As the paper floated down to the worktop, Jack caught it and seemed to consider what was written on it. Eventually he grinned and handed it over to Kyle.

Kyle took it and looked closely at it. The handwriting was close and neat, almost like a computer rather than a person. 'Be at the MT city gym tomorrow at 10:15 tomorrow, bring the Timeforcer, great things are afoot, DA.'

"Angelo?"

Jack nodded and slid the pieces of potato onto a tray which he slid into the oven. Then he seemed to consider. "It probably is anyway. I think there are a couple of other Interfacers that use the initials 'DA' so it could be one of them."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that," Kyle said. "Who are the Interfacers anyway?"

Jack shrugged. "The only reason the Interfacers aren't gods, is because they say they're not. If one of them chose to say they were, there's nothing that the likes of you or I could do to stop them. Some of them are more powerful than others, some barely register as anything other than a Human with ESP."

"Do they have any leaders?"

There was an almost unnoticeable pause before Jack answered. "Angelo sometimes refers to something called the 'Anargus'. I get the impression that if they say 'go' then he does." He glanced up from the oven at Kyle. "Doesn't Neo have anyone that he has to report to?"

Kyle shrugged. "I've never asked. I guess though from what I've seen that they pretty much make up leadership as they go along. Whoever wants the job can take it so long as everyone else doesn't mind." As he spoke Kyle realised how little he actually knew about Neo Paradox.

"Pretty much like you lot," Jack said, gesturing toward the door and the Maverick Hunters in the room beyond.

Kyle glared at him. "How long till we eat?"

Jack looked round the kitchen then turned back to Kyle. "Give it about an hour, then we'll wake everyone up."

The night passed without incident, so long as the argument between Adam and Kieran as to who got to the last sofa first didn't count.

Breakfast was taken quickly and Jack was slightly worried when they weren't out of the house before half past nine. The trip to the gym could take hours if they weren't careful.

Heading down to the garage, they all piled into Jack's car. There was a bit of argument about that as well, though the fact that neither Neo or Adam had a M.A.C. earned them a place while Kieran and X lost at straws and had to ride separately.

On the way there, Jack kept looking at his watch, eventually worrying Kyle enough that he insisted that Jack should keep his eyes on the road rather than on his watch.

When they arrived it was to find Kieran and X had taken the short-cut and arrived a few minutes ahead of them. Jack checked his watch to find that they'd arrived with only a few minutes to spare.

"So what are we waiting for," Zero asked.

Jack placed his hands on the dumbbell that rested on the supports above his head and, with a slight grunt of effort, pushed it into the air. Keeping his arms locked so that the dumbbell was supported above his head, he looked up at Zero from his reclined position.

They'd been in the gym for a few minutes now and Zero was obvious impatient. Jack had taken the opportunity to get some weight-lifting in and the dumbbell suspended above his head currently had close to fifty kilograms hung on each end.

"We're waiting for whatever Angelo wanted us here for."

Zero glared at him. "You're friend has an odd idea of a sensible message, doesn't he." There wasn't the slightest hint that this was a question, or that Zero was impressed by Jack's strength.

Jack lowered the weights back to the supports. "Angelo can be a bit secretive sometimes. Generally though he gets round to explaining himself and always has a good reason for doing something."

Zero huffed and wandered off to where a punch-bag had been strung up from the ceiling. While Jack went back to lifting weights there came the sound of Zero taking his stress out on a defenceless punch-bag in a very serious way.

Smiling to himself, Jack tried to pick up on what everyone else was doing. Kyle had been starting out on some sparring practise with Adam, Kieran was apparently going for a vertical speed record on some ropes while X had settled himself going through some kind of routine involving press-ups, sit-ups and a couple of other exercises.

Grinning to himself, Jack lowered the dumbbell back to its supports and got himself out from under it. Heading over to Neo, he tried to turn his expression into a serious one. "You're hopeless."

The Timeforcer was lying flat out on a couple of mats, red in the face, sweat pouring from him, breathing hard. His eyes had been closed, though opened wearily when Jack spoke to him. "Shut up. I can't help it if an amorphous personification of some Timeforcer's nightmare managed to get me through my guts. You'd feel a lot worse than I do if you were me."

Jack nodded sarcastically. "I'm sure I would. Then again you could have kept in shape."

"What's the point?" Neo managed to raise himself onto an elbow then sit up on his second attempt. "I never thought I'd be without my powers so never worried about being out of shape. Anyway, I can look how I like."

"But apparently you can't be as healthy and in shape as you want." Jack got a hand under Neo's shoulder before his abortive attempt at standing caused him to collapse. Helping him to his feet, Jack indicated the benches on one side of the hall. "I think you'd better sit down."

Neo nodded and started to hobble over to the benches. Just as he was about to sit down though, the clocks chimed quarter past ten.

There was a massive concussion that lifted Neo and Jack off their feet and dumped them half way across the spacious gym. Jack landed rolling with the skill of a veteran. Neo apparently didn't do as well, sliding several metres across the laminated wooden floor before coming to a stop.

Jack was on his feet in an instant, using the momentum from the trip to roll to his knees, then to stand. He looked round, certain that the gym must have been hit by some kind of bomb. As he did though he saw that the only effect that what seemed to have been an explosion actually had was to throw him and Neo across the room.

Except in one place. Half-way hack to the benches, a two metre high lightning bolt sprang from the floor and spread upwards, outlining a Humanoid figure in the air. There was a dramatic flash and the lines came together to form a person.

It might once have been Human. Right now though this wasn't the case. The figure had deathly pale skin. It appeared to be male, and was clad in the sort of cloths that really well funded biker gang members might wear, made with real leather, slashed by someone paid to do so while on very heavy drugs (possibly its owner), furbished with platinum studs and finished with several mottos done tastefully using the lower intestines of certain rare and suddenly extinct species, like the owner's enemies.

Here though the resemblance to a Human stopped. If nothing else then the fact that most of the mottos weren't even in a language spoken by Humans made this clear. If that failed, then the fact that the figure's eyes were glowing bright red (with little flames, like marsh gas, burning round the eyelashes and eyebrows) and its hair was sticking up in the air, glowing different shades of black, clinched it.

Neo groaned, and turned himself over so that he could see the grinning figure. His face crumpled up in horror and he swore in a language that Jack was nearly certain wasn't Human in origin. "Psycho."

The figure grinned even wider. When it spoke, spit flew off teeth that could probably have been used to cut up sheets of Titanium-X armour were they not so bent out of shape. "So, you remember me." The voice shook the entire building and brought up memories of some nightmares that Jack would rather have forgotten. This was a voice that could make 'good morning' sound like a killing insult and level entire cities by saying 'damn'. A tongue that was almost as sharp as the teeth and dripping blood licked the lips that had apparently come with it.

"How could I forget the person that came into my life, tried to kill me, then left when I shot him through the stadium's seating arrangement?" Neo tried to climb to his feet but got as far as his elbows before collapsing back.

"That was millennia ago," the apparently aptly named Psycho spat. "It doesn't look like you're in a good position to do the same now does it?" He leered at Neo, then glanced to his right where Kyle had gotten into armour and was slowly levelling an X-Buster at his head. "Don't try it Blue Bomber."

Xtreme gapped for a minute, then snapped his mouth shut. "How did you know that nickname?"

Psycho leered at him. "You think I don't know that you don't like being called that? How about the fact that you haven't spoken to either of your parents outside the occasional letter for about five years? How about if I show everyone what you and Linna got up to during that wonderful party?"

Xtreme went back to gaping for an instant before Neo forced himself to his feet, desperation and adrenaline giving him new strength. "Psycho!"

A gnarled hand with long, razor-sharp fingernails that had been painted black made a casual gesture in Neo's direction. He crumpled to the floor, small lightning bolts crawling over his body.

"Don't worry," Psycho said. "I won't harm your pets. Fact is, I might get round to looking after them for you once I've dealt with you. Wouldn't that be nice?" His leer vanished to be replaced by a slightly worried expression. "Only problem is… I don't know how to look after pets like this. I'm sure I could find a suitable cage to keep them in though and I'm certain I could teach them some interesting tricks if I tried."

Jack watched this carefully, using everything he'd learnt from Angelo to fade into the foreground, not to become invisible, because to people like Psycho (who he presumed to be another Timeforcer) being invisible just made you stand out. This trick involved blending in perfectly, like looking at a wooden door and seeing a face in it that became a few whorls in the patterns when you blinked. This though was the trick, but in reverse, to see a blank wall, but see the person that really was there is you focused. So far it seemed to be working.

Neo seemed to be doing the opposite though, trying to draw Psycho's attention towards himself and away from the Reploids. Jack had already guessed from Psycho's arrival that none of them would be able to hurt him at all so the best idea was to keep quiet and hope that once he'd dealt with Neo he'd consider them too boring to do anything with.

Neo Paradox forced himself to his feet again, clutching at his left forearm as if it was still in pain. "Leave them alone Psycho. It's me you want."

"But I've never had a pet before," Psycho complained. He seemed to turn excited and even more spittle came forth. "Look what I can make this one do!"

The maniac gestured at Zero, who suddenly cried out as, apparently against his will, he began to do star jumps. The problem was that the jumps kept getting faster as they watched.

Neo held out a hand towards Zero, palm down, fingers splayed out. His face creased with effort as he presumably drew on what little power he could manage to. There was a vague glow around Zero as the two powers collided, then Zero collapsed, apparently exhausted.

"I said, leave them alone," Neo said, getting unsteadily to his feet.

"Or what?" Psycho had jumped back to his usual sarcastic and leering state.

Neo opened his mouth, then closed it, apparently lost for words.

"You can't do anything can you? You're as weak as them," Psycho gestured toward the Reploids on the opposite side of Neo from Jack, who was apparently still unnoticed.

Neo seemed to crumple up at this, his expression changing to anguish, his figure becoming slumped. "I just want you to leave them alone."

Psycho grinned. "Then you should have left them alone as well. Never get too attached to your pets, particularly the ones that break easily." He raised a hand towards Neo. "I've waited a long time for this."

"Why did Angelo have to get us to come here?" Neo was simply cursing the darkness with his last breath Jack knew, but he did have a point, and even Psycho seemed to be surprised by the idea that they'd been asked to be at this location.

Before the killer could carry out his execution, a white light appeared over his head. The Timeforcer looked up at it as it expanded into a circle that flowed down over him till it shrank to nothing just below the floor. Another followed it, and another, speeding up till in less than a second a cocoon of light surrounded Psycho.

There was a faint red glow behind the light, as if someone was belatedly trying to break out. It seemed to work because the cocoon flashed and when they could look again it had vanished. But it wasn't the figure of Psycho standing there.

A new figure, slightly taller than the imposing bulk of Psycho, was standing there, black hair parted neatly, shades carefully in place on his nose, black jacket and trousers freshly pressed and, most tellingly, a painfully white shirt beneath the jacket.

As Jack faded back into sight, the figure spoke.

"That's why," said Dark Angelo.

Angelo looked round the gym, trying to blink the starlines off his super-spatial retina. Diving through a causal nexus and a series of dimensional barriers had been bad enough without having to step into a raving lunatic without being noticed whilst the Anargus pulled the rug out from beneath the twit's feet.

Strangely, none of the people in the gym seemed to be too pleased to see him apart from Jack, and possibly Neo.

"Isn't anyone even going to say hello?"

Neo stood shakily, and glared at Angelo. "He could have bloody well killed me."

So maybe not Neo then.

Angelo shook his head and grinned. "Not a chance. I've had my eye on him for the last hour and knew almost exactly word for word what he'd say and do. Admittedly I didn't anticipate you bringing him down on top of yourself quite that soon, but even if I'd been a few seconds late, I'd have still have had several minutes to do something about him. This way though, he won't be able to get at you until you leave this universe."

"What do you mean?" Neo didn't sound like he believed a word of it. "You can't stop a Timeforcer from getting into a universe he wants to get into.

Angelo sighed. "That twit let himself be drawn right into a leyline, meaning that when we did the switch thing, the Anargus were able to get a dimensional barrier locked round him. He can wander round all he wants, but if he tries to get back into this universe then he'll be killed, or at least severely inconvenienced for a long time."

"A couple of years?"

Neo obviously was starting to fall back into Human ways of thinking. "A couple of years is only a long time to a Snail. To a Timeforcer though…" He left the sentence hanging in mid-air. To someone that was immortal, only an eternity could be classed as a 'long time'.

Jack smiled at Neo then wandered over to Angelo. "Great to see you buddy." Angelo shook his hand and looked at the others. "Sorry about the delay, but I did the best I could."

Xtreme seemed about to say something, but was interrupted by a minor thunderclap just above his head. The bang was accompanied by a faint flash and something small shot out of the flash and landed several metres away.

Xtreme had ducked instinctively when the bang went off, and was probably totally surprised by the way that Angelo bent time so that he was pointing his X-Buster towards the floor before he'd even begun to move it towards whatever had appeared.

As they watched though, they began to understand what had appeared, despite Angelo having picked up on it almost instantly.

A small grey furred monkey unrolled itself from the ball it had rolled itself into. This was moderately okay. The startling part was that it was wearing a scaled down, slightly tatty brown jacket that had probably been high fashion once, probably during the Victorian era in England. As it patted itself down and smoothed out its jacket it pulled a rolled up grey disk out of a pocket that it couldn't possibly have fitted into and unrolled it then knocked it against one elbow. The middle part of the disk sprang out to become the crown of a top hat, probably ten centimetres tall.

Putting the hat on its head and slipping a monocle on a chain over its right eye, the monkey turned to face them and grinned. One gold tooth reflected the light for an instant and went ting.

"I thought you were going back to the old business," Angelo said accusingly.

The monkey grinned slightly wider and spoke. It had an unusual means of speaking, not telepathy as such because you heard that in your mind. This voice went and played music directly onto your nervous system.

I saw you sneaking off to have fun with Jack. Anyway, I didn't decide, you did. The voice had a sly tone, the sort that could sell you the world in a couple of minutes and get you to pay in cash, on demand.

The others all seemed to be having trouble with this means of speaking, except Jack, who'd had long conversations with this individual before and Neo, who'd probably used it himself a couple of times.

"Who's your friend," Zero asked eventually.

"How terribly remise of me," Angelo said in mock apology. "The Xtreme team, meet a one-time pet of mine, currently friend and associate, Warwick. Warwick, meet the Xtreme team, I guess you know names already."

Warwick nodded, then scuttled over and held out a hand.

Having faced down Boomers, Mavericks, Mechaloids and on rare occasions, Priss Asigiri, the Xtreme team was totally dumbfounded at the idea of shaking hands with a two foot tall monkey in a top hat.

Neo though, had seen and done odder things. "Hi." He shook Warwick's hand carefully, as if worried about breaking bones. "Let me guess; another Interfacer."

Warwick nodded. And you're that Timeforcer geezer that's lost his powers and still has yet to save the Multiverse.

Neo's eye twitched. "You know about that?"

Which bit of it?

"Saving the Multiverse." Neo seemed to be taking this conversation slowly, as if memorising every detail for consideration later.

Who do you think sent what's'is face the vision of his future? The Anargus might not live in the Multiverse but they don't want people to go round rebuilding it wily-nily, see.

"If he hadn't had that vision then Psycho would never have been sent against me!"

And you'd have died before you could develop your powers and save everything. Trust me on this one; the alternative plan was to trip you up before you got run over by that truck the next day.

"I didn't get run over the next day though!"

Warwick gave Neo a look that he only usually reserved for Angelo when he said something unusually mortal (or 'stupid' as he sometimes referred to it). Only because you'd developed those powers.

Neo looked away. There was something about being told about a future that would certainly have killed you, by a monkey that could give you a more intelligent look than most Humans, that really put you off talking for a while.

"Who are you," Kyle asked, transforming out of his armour.

Warwick looked up at him. Ever heard of 'The Amazing Warwick And His Trained Human'?

Kyle thought a bit, then shook his head. "Shouldn't that have been 'trained monkey'?"

Warwick shook his head. Nah. The whole idea was that most people thought that this guy was some kind of ventriloquist and that I was very, very well trained, see. The actual story is that I developed these powers in the jungle, let myself be brought to a town, found this homeless guy and the pair of us went round doing this show for a while till he could afford a decent job and didn't need my help. He did all these tricks while I went round being the ringmaster, like in a circus, only in reverse.

There was a moment of quiet while they contemplated this. Those were the good days of course when cloths like this meant something, Warwick continued, tugging at his lapels. Angelo noticed that there was still that watch in one pocket with its chain dangling loosely across one side of Warwick's jacket. Of course now they go in for either far too plain most of the time or, if they want to look cool, too metallic. Warwick made a casual gesture with one hand and the entire Xtreme team (not including Jack) found themselves in armour. Like that stuff.

"Never held with armour myself," said Angelo. "As far as I can see it's just another type of mask, and I've really never held with those. If you don't want people to know who you are, what's the point in wanting to do anything that people can see?"

Kyle deactivated his armour, probably slightly irate at the experience of having it appear around him without his consent. "Well sometimes you need armour when you take on a Combat Boomer."

Yeah, Warwick agreed in a voice that suggested clearly that Kyle should have worked out a way that didn't involve armour, but the least you could do is make sure people know who you are. If they don't know, how do you know who you are?

"I'd know who I am," Kyle said.

"Most people don't when they have a mask on," Angelo supplied. One of the slight advantages he'd discovered about being an Interfacer was that metaphysics came naturally to him and debating such things was remarkably easy. "Either that or they find out who they really are. Most people don't like that."

"I'm in total control when I'm in armour," Kyle objected. In a flash of the instinctive telepathy that he sometimes suffered from, Angelo spotted the worry and half-lie.

I bet, Warwick said, grinning to show that he'd picked it up as well.

"I do admit that I get it sometimes," Neo supplied. He seemed to have gotten his breath back now, though was still sweating. "When I take on a different form I sometimes tend to do things, then change back and wonder why I did."

"Morphic resonance," Angelo said. "Similar idea but a more extreme case. In that case, the shape you are tells you how you should behave, like really bad hormone control."

Neo seemed to consider. "You're right, it did feel quite like being a teenager again."

They'd all gone back to working out, except Kieran who was taking drum lessons from Warwick. The little Interfacer had pulled a full sized drum kit for Kieran out of thin air, assuring him that the staff wouldn't object and the security system certainly wouldn't record him having a drum lesson from a monkey.

Warwick had then brought his own drum kit into existence. The bass drum that was operated by a foot pedal, was only a foot across, yet somehow managed to produce the same note and volume as Kieran's. The pair of them were managing to produce quite a racket, meaning that if the rest of them conversed, they were obliged to shout.

"How did he end up as an Interfacer," Kyle asked Jack as they both did press ups. Kyle was feeling slightly inadequate as, while he was doing press ups at a rate of about one and a half a second, Angelo was doing them one handed at a rate of about ten or twenty a second, causing a slight amount of Doppler shifting in his voice.

"Same way that I did," replied Angelo, switching hands in mid-air. "You're born an Interfacer. It has nothing to do with genetics at all, which surprises most people. You might be born the son or daughter of two perfectly normal Humans, with a very good pedigree and not even a trace of ESP, then suddenly you have someone who can speed up time with his mind and cross dimensional barriers simply by taking a step in the wrong direction.

"Then you get the sort of opposite happening. Two or more Interfacers, depending on species, get together, have a child and suddenly you have someone that is totally normal, or as normal as any species gets." Pushing himself off, Angelo managed to spin with his spine as an axis, then landed on his other hand and carried on. "Just tell me why a monkey shouldn't be an Interfacer but a Human should?"

"A more evolved brain," Kyle suggested.

Angelo blew a raspberry at the same time that Warwick went mad on his drums, temporarily deafening them all. Kieran was trying, Kyle had to admit that. It was just that it was hard to learn to play from someone who could fold time around himself, not to mention was holding two drumsticks in each hand, one in one foot, had the other foot on the bass pedal and a drumstick held tightly in his tail.

"Less of the bass if you don't mind," called out Angelo as he pushed himself, one handed, into a vertical position without bending anything other than his wrist, elbow and shoulder joints. Kyle had noticed that complex resonances from the drums had caused a thin layer of paint to be removed from the walls which was now settling as dust. He was even sure that the windows in the roof had shattered for an instant, then the shards had reversed their direction and fallen back into place.

Reverse entropy. What a defence that would be.

Kyle pushed himself, slightly more slowly, to his feet. As he did, Warwick yelled an acknowledgement, then stopped beating up the drum kit and began chatting to Kieran.

"A more evolved brain just means you can fit bigger and more complex words round what's happening to you. No, some of the best Interfacers are the ones that have had the least education or evolution because they don't know what they shouldn't be able to do. I will admit that you do have to have at least basic sentience to stand a chance of becoming an Interfacer, but that includes most of the species on the Earth that are visible to the naked Human eye. Or the naked Human's eye, depending on your point of view."

"So you're born with these powers," Kyle suggested as the pair of them headed over to a set of mats that had been laid out to cover as large an area as possible. Angelo flickered for an instant, then appeared on the far side of the mats, his body held in a Judo stance.

"Oh yeah, just most of the time you don't know it."

Kyle slid himself into a similar stance, patiently waiting for the Interfacer to make the first move. "So you can do these really amazing things…"

Angelo straightened up and shook his head. "Not quite." He suddenly blurred and Kyle barely managed to deflect the fist that nearly caught him in the face. "To put it bluntly," Angelo continued as he and Kyle exchanged blows, "there are a couple of types of Interfacer at birth. The first is the worst, having all their powers right from birth. Very dangerous. We're obliged to spend at least some of our spare time dealing with such cases.

"The next kind," Angelo artfully dodged Kyle's punch, then deflected the elbow that followed it up, "get their powers naturally as their life goes on. Not very common. One of the best kinds though because they grow up knowing what they've got and you can tell pretty early whether you're going to need to kill them or not in later life.

"The last and most common kind," here Angelo's arms became a blur as he deflected Kyle's attacks which would have pulverised even a Boomer, "are the ones who have the gift, but don't have enough power to get it working. Then anything can kick-start their powers. Lightning is popular, so is getting really angry. A really bad case of UV poisoning can do the job. Then again I know one Interfacer that gained access to their powers from having one guilty chocolate too many. Some go through their life and die without ever finding out."

Both of their arms were blurring now as Kyle drew on speeds and strength that he hadn't realised he had. Maybe my armour is helping me out after all.

Then Angelo suddenly folded time again and was several metres away. Kyle suddenly found his arms being dragged back to a visible speed as air-friction cut back in. Apparently he hadn't managed anything, Angelo had just gotten bored of an easy opponent and tried to give him an edge.

"Sorry," Angelo said. "Call of super-nature." He began to take a step towards the door that lead out of the gym, then folded time again and became a blurred line in the air.

Kyle frowned after him. "Where's he gone?"

When you've gotta go, you've gotta go, Warwick said practically. I'll be back soon. The little monkey dropped his drumsticks, jumped nimbly down off the scaled down stool that he'd been sitting on when he was playing, and became a blur in the air as well.

Kyle frowned at the little drum kit on the floor, slightly worried that he was beginning to take things like this for granted. In his general experience, small monkeys didn't turn up wearing a coat and top hat then start playing the drums. Oh well, we live and learn.

He turned round to look at what the others were doing, and didn't see something that disturbed him even more.

As he looked round the gym, all of them had come down to one end of the hall. The hall itself was spacious and could easily have accommodated five times as many people. The problem was that, as his gaze passed over the other end of the hall, he was sure there was something there.

It is important to remember that he didn't see it, which is what was wrong. He could see the wall at the far end, with mats stacked up against it, a fire exit, a climbing wall… But as he watched he was sure that there was something in the way. He couldn't see it but he was sure that it was there. By squinting, or turning his head sharply, he could just about make out the shape of the thing. It was huge, at least twice the size of an elephant, taking up most of one half of the hall.

As he tried to focus on it he felt his gaze shy off it, focusing instead on the wall behind it. There's nothing there, his mind told him. If there's something there then you can see it, but you can't so there isn't.

"Er, guys…" Several encounters with Neo had taught him that sometimes you had to go with what your instincts told you rather than what common sense said. He raised a tentative finger and indicated the wall (because the creature obviously wasn't there to indicate). "We're not alone."

The others stopped what they were doing and glanced round. Then they all did a double take, trying to focus on the thing-that-wasn't-there.

As he indicated it Kyle felt its lack-of-gaze focus on him. He suddenly realised that there was a slight dent in the floor, as if the thing was weighing enough to bend the reinforced wood, steel and concrete that they were standing on. Listening carefully, Kyle could just make out the sound of what might have been breathing, then a long drawn out scrapping sound, as if something was scratching two very hard things against each other.

There was a vague thud and Kyle saw the dent in the floor move a few metres closer to them. "Er, strategic withdrawal?"

There came the sound of a door opening behind him and he turned to see Angelo and Warwick re-enter the hall. He was opening his mouth to warn them, when Angelo opened his instead and let loose with a set of syllables that Kyle probably couldn't have hoped to reproduce with a full recording and mixing studio.

There was a slight pause, then the thing-that-wasn't-there apparently responded in what sounded like the same language. There was a brief exchange, with Warwick throwing in a few phrases, then silence. Kyle felt the lack-of-gaze fall on him again.

"Oh well, that's this holiday cut short," Angelo sighed. Warwick nodded in agreement and leapt up to Angelo's shoulder in a single bound.

"Pardon?" Zero was eyeing Angelo nervously. Even Jack seemed to be very unsure right now.

Angelo gestured at the huge nothing that was taking up most of the other end of the hall. "Apparently the Anargus want us for some job or other. We'll be back as soon as possible."

"You were talking to that thing?" Kyle was startled at the idea. Only Neo seemed to have a semblance of calm about him right now.

"Hf is another Interfacer," Angelo explained. "It's slightly more convenient for the Anargus to send someone else to get us rather than turn up in persons."

"Hf?"

Angelo rolled his eyes and looked over at Neo. "You do know New Galactic Advanced don't you?"

"Oh sure," Neo said. He turned to face in the general direction of the lack-of-creature and, bowing at the waist, uttered something that sounded like the language that Angelo had used, though slightly more mangled. Kyle felt the un-gaze focus on Neo, then the non-creature replied to him.

"Good, but possibly a little less emphasis on the 'R's," Angelo said. "And while we're away could you explain about New Galactic Advanced and the twelve pronouns?"

Neo grinned at him, the workout apparently having done him some good. "Sure. See you later."

Angelo nodded his thanks, then took a step to the left. As he did, both he and Warwick seemed to fold in upon themselves, entering a set of dimensions that Humans probably wouldn't be safe to consider.

Chapter 7 – Social climbers

"To put it bluntly," Neo said as they settled down in Jack's living room, "in most futures that involve Humans, a surprising number of them in fact, two main languages are spoken by Humans."

They'd returned to Jack's house after Angelo had vanished. Kieran was sure that Neo was a lot more sure of himself now, probably something to do with the fact that Psycho could no longer get at him.

"The most common is New Galactic Basic. That's basically English, with a few extra pronouns and tenses thrown in so that normal people could cope with things like Relativity more easily and it was easier to understand alien species that had more than just he, she and it.

"The other is New Galactic Advanced, which is like NGB, but has three scientific alphabets added onto the end, has more specific words for different situations and had several dozen extra tenses."

"Why the extra tenses," Adam asked.

Neo seemed to consider. "It was for use when dealing with Time Travel mainly. For instance instead of the NGA tense 'keveln', in English you or I would be referring to: an-event-that-will-happen-in-the-future-from-this-frame-of-temporal-reference-because-as-far-as-I-(not-we)-are-concerned-it-has-already-happened-in-my-past-which-is-your-future." Neo managed to get the last part out in one breath.

The others looked slightly put out. "And what was that about twelve pronouns," Kyle asked.

Neo shrugged. "He, she, it, hf, ked and the rest refer to different possible sexes that a life-form can hold."

The others frowned and seemed to consider this. "Can you teach me that language Neo?" Kyle said this carefully as if worried that the answer might bite him.

Neo grinned. "Not a chance. I've seen you and foreign languages before now. Just be glad you don't know it in fact. I spend quite a lot of my time trying not to use slang terms that won't even have a basis for a meaning for several thousand years."

Kieran shook his head and smiled. Sometimes, Neo could be slightly daft.

"So, what are we going to do for the rest of the day," Adam asked.

"Here's an idea," said Zero leaning forward. "What if we head over to Terranew's office, ask to see Harmen Solen, then Z-Sabre him to death and teleport out before the guards can get us."

The others seemed to consider this. Jack looked like he was going to scream blue murder at someone, probably for their persistence.

"Sounds like a good idea," X commented. Kieran noticed that Neo was sitting in-between X and Jack so X probably hadn't seen Jack's expression.

"Yeah," said Kyle. "After all we could probably be in there and out again in a few minutes so we might actually be home for dinner." Kyle just hadn't looked in Jack's direction.

"Fine!" Jack yelled the word, startling those of them that hadn't seen his expression. "But lets plan things a bit better than that."

"Like what?" Kieran leaned forward as he said this. He wasn't much of one for plans, but was interested in what Jack's idea of one might be.

"Firstly, unlike most people, I'm not interested in working out every little detail or making everything up as I go along. The first option means that if the slightest detail goes wrong so does absolutely everything. The second only works when you're on your own otherwise you might as well just have seven separate plans and we'll all end up assassinating each other.

"We, roughly speaking, will have three plans. Plan A is as Zero suggested but I'll do the talking if we have any choice. Plan B…"

"You seriously come up with things like this?" Zero was almost laughing at the idea.

Jack glared at him then continued. "If I declare that we're using Plan B, then we'll be a lot more careful about it and be ready to leave at the first sign of trouble."

"And Plan C?" Kieran was starting to like Jack's ideas of plans.

"If I tell you we're going to Plan C, get out as fast as you can."

The Terranew office block was an amazing sight to X. Using what passed for the GPS system in this world and compensating for the few differences in the numbers, he worked out that the Terranew building was on the same site as Sylia's Silky Doll shop.

It was tall, probably over a hundred floors. Most of the outer surface was made of glass or something similar, meaning that it would have looked better in their own universe than it did here, where most of the office blocks seemed to be painted black and didn't have any windows that he could see. His first proper look at the Terranew logo caused him to glance sharply at Zero, who was grimly staring at it, his fists clenching and unclenching several times a second.

They'd driven into town in Jack's car, with Kyle and Kieran on M.A.C.s this time. Jack had left the car a few streets away, hopefully where it wouldn't attract attention or get clamped, if they did that here. For all X knew the police might simply let the tyres down and steal the caps for the valves.

They'd all hidden their armour, though X knew well enough that they all had at least metaphorical finger on the activation controls.

Except Neo of course.

"I could do with some weapons," he complained. Then he seemed to reconsider. "Though I'll settle for looking presentable." He laid a hand on Kyle's shoulder. "Kyle, look at me for a minute."

Kyle looked round at Neo, then almost blinked as he felt something that he had to describe as slimy, slide in behind his eyes.

Neo rearranged his jacket, slipped his shades on, smoothed out his shirt and tried to flatten his hair. He seemed to be concentrating the whole time, as if trying to see his reflection in a window.

Eventually the feeling vanished from Kyle's mind. "That felt awful. Why couldn't you just ask for a mirror?"

Neo shrugged. "It's easier to use someone's eyes than a mirror. Besides, where am I supposed to get a full length mirror right now?"

The entrance hall to the Terranew building was done in large amounts of marble, that had a sufficiently new feel that X guessed that it was either new or was very carefully scrubbed every few minutes. This entire building couldn't have been more than a few weeks old. Or more precisely: three weeks at most.

They headed up to the reception desk and X was startled by the calm that Jack managed to maintain.

For his part, Jack was scared so badly he was surprised no one could smell it.

Trying to keep his voice steady, and surprising himself with this strange talent of professionally lying (that some people referred to as acting), he managed to get the attention of the receptionist.

"We'd like to see Mr Solen."

The receptionist looked up and smiled at him. She looked quite young and not quite the sort of person that worked for something like Terranew. Her eyes taking in the rest of the team would have gone unnoticed by someone that wasn't specifically looking for such details. "Certainly sir. Do you have an appointment?"

Jack shrugged. "I've tried a couple of times to arrange one. To be frank I get the impression he might be avoiding…" He cut off as there came a bleep from the desk in front of the receptionist. She looked down and did something to the polarized screen that was just out of sight anyway below the overhang.

She seemed to read what had presumably come up on the screen, then looked up and smiled. "Mr Solen will be happy to see you Mr Tomlinson. He also wishes to extend his regards to Mr Kyle Reeves, Mr Kieran Reeves, Mr Volnut, Mr X and Mr Zero. Also to the unknown Timeforcer." She smiled at them and gestured at the lift against one wall. "Just push for the hundred and first floor."

Jack felt his calm mask crack for an instant and was certain that the receptionist's eyes lit up with a secret smile at the same time.

"That was prompt of him," Jack said carefully.

"Apparently he doesn't wish to be avoiding you any more." She moved back and stood up to get a file off a shelf that was built into the pillar at the centre of the circular reception desk. As she did, exactly as she had obviously planned he should, Jack caught sight of the black oval of metal and plastic on her belt; the transformation technology that the guards used.

Ohshitohsitohsit oh SHIT!

Smiling, he gestured for the others to follow, and headed for the lift. When one arrived, there was easily room for all of them and fortunately no one else was there.

"She knew I was a Timeforcer?" Neo was looking slightly worried at the idea.

Jack pushed for the hundred and first floor, then when the doors closed, spoke. "She didn't, though I get the impression she knew what one was and that you'd lost your powers. I suspect Mr Solen was keeping a careful eye on the security system or guessed that we might turn up and was going to be very ready. I think Plan B is called for."

The rest of the short trip up to the hundred and first floor was in silence, except for Adam groaning occasionally that he didn't like going in lifts and if this one didn't stop soon they'd regret having not stopped it.

When they reached the end, Jack was slightly surprised that they actually stopped on the hundred and fifth floor. Obviously someone was trying to keep them off balance, though in the case of Adam that wasn't hard right now. He was hoping that they'd be able to stay here for long enough for his stomach to calm down before going down again.

They stepped into what looked like an office that took up an entire floor of the building except where the lift and a stairwell came up through the middle of it. The place was spacious, with red carpet, pale walls and ceiling and a few plants around the corners. Enough pieces of furniture were scattered round the room to seat what probably counted as most of the workforce.

Straight ahead of them as they stepped out of the lift, was a large table with a man sitting in a comfy and well padded chair behind it.

"Ah, do come in," the man called out, standing up as he did.

Jack walked over to the indicated chairs, being sure to take in as much detail of this place as he could, starting with the man he presumed to be Harmen Solen.

He was tall, perhaps an inch taller than Jack's six foot two. His features were well-defined and he had a certain smoothness and perfection to his skin that was disturbingly familiar. His hair was an alarming shade of blonde, the same as Zero's, though none of it seemed to be more than a centimetre long. Piercingly blue eyes looked at them as they approached, again with a sense of disturbing familiarity, possibly somewhere in the regularity of the patterns in them…

Never mind. Jack instinctively ran a hand across the surface of the chair to check for any tricks, keeping his gaze roving. Mr Solen was wearing an unusual suit, black jacket, black trousers, black shirt and a black tie, though that did have a splash of colour on it: the same logo that the tank that had blown the generator to bits had had painted on it.

When they'd all sat down, Mr Solen did the same. "Now Mr Tomlinson, it seems that you and the Xtreme team wish to see me about something."

Jack allowed a slightly puzzled smile to creep through his mask. "You seem to know us quite well for someone that we've never actually met before."

Harmen Solen smiled back at him and sat back. "I don't need to meet you. I'm rich you known and money never needs to talk, just listen. Besides, when the masterful actions of the Xtreme team and Knight Sabres can be seen on the news reports, it's only a short amount of work to find out their real names."

"You've visited our universe?" Kyle leaned forward as he asked, clenching his right hand into a fist, as if activating an X-Buster.

Solen's eyes flickered between Kyle's face and fist for a second. "Of course I have. It's my universe as well." His eyes shifted to Zero. "Wouldn't you agree brother?"

There was a stunned silence for a minute, then Zero swore softly under his breath. At the same time, Jack realised where he'd seen skin and eyes like that before: X and Zero. This guy must be a Reploid with an MBAS or something similar.

"I'm not your brother," Zero said.

"Not by the usual definition," Solen agreed. "But created by the same person, given the same initial programming… Admittedly you were programmed for a bit more finesse than me, but that's only to be expected."

"What do you mean, 'a bit more finesse'?"

Solen seemed to consider. "While you would be sent in to assassinate someone and, in very extreme circumstances, might level an entire building, I on the other hand would be sent in to level a building and for much the same very extreme reasons, would level an entire city."

Jack felt his own hand clench into a fist. "So what happened?"

Solen shrugged. "I was still being tested, was trying out my gravity well projector, got struck by lightning and ended up elsewhere." He smiled self-depreciatingly. "Took me a while to work out what had happened, but I pretty quickly worked out where I came from."

Kyle nodded sympathetically. "Same thing happened to me."

Zero seemed to have been thinking. "This all means that you still obey Dr Wily."

Solen cast a sharp glance at him. "I got over that a long time ago. But if it makes you feel better, if he called, I would have to respond. So would you."

The others frowned, then looked at Zero, who was staring at Solen in amazement. "WAZ. Wily, something, Zero."

Solen shrugged. "It's Alpha if you must know."

Jack glanced at Kyle and they exchanged a nod. They could do with any free information that Sol… Alpha, was willing to give them, but if he got out of hand, then Kyle was ready to seriously prod buttock.

"But you'll soon get to know me a bit better. I must admit that I've never actually been able to get hold of any Reploid technology in my travels, so coming across other people with an MBAS is very lucky, though not quite for you."

That was sooner than I'd hoped, Jack thought. As he did so, he began to stand, then stopped when he heard the sound of very hard claws clattering up the stair-well.

"Plan C, I think."

Neo had barely registered that Jack had said those words before the man had hit the nearest window, arms folded over his head, glowing lines appearing around him as his armour activated.

The other's glanced back at the stairwell, then followed, between them removing a couple of metres of window. Neo dived through after the rest of them, realising as his feet left the floor that without his powers, he couldn't fly.

Several metres below him, Neo could see that Jack was in armour and busy transforming that into a different armour configuration. Kieran had managed to grab Zero and lock a Strike-Chain from his Biker Armour onto the side of the building, causing the pair of them to pendulum into the side of the office block. Kyle and X both seemed to be transforming rapidly into Falcon Armour, which should at least enable them to fly.

Adam had got into armour as well, though how this would help if he hit the ground at these speeds, Neo wasn't sure. Reploid armour could only take a certain amount of damage and at the least, he would probably be badly concussed.

Again becoming aware of his own predicament, Neo saw Xtreme and X slow themselves and shoot upwards past him, X managing to snag Trigger as he passed.

Realising that he'd become the lowest member of the rapidly descending group, Neo turned and managed to catch the wind so that he could look up. The wind whipped at his ankle length jacket, flapping it around his knees. Xtreme was above him, body almost vertical, hand outstretched, A-G field going in full reverse to accelerate him downwards. Despite this, when Neo reached out their hands were still a couple of metres away from each other and getting only marginally closer.

Glancing down, then back up, Neo looked straight into Xtreme's desperate eyes, and thought quickly.

Closing his eyes, trying to ignore the air whipping around him, he tried to concentrate, looking down through the levels of perception till he could see the atoms of the air whipping past him.

Not far enough.

Diving deeper, drawing on every scrap of power that he could, he looked down to the most fundamental level of particles, those that Humans weren't even ready to acknowledge the existence of. Focussing his grip, he moved his fingers…

For an instant he had a hand-hold on a Subspace Fluctuation Wave. For that instant he felt his fingers being torn to shreds by the sub-Quark particle stream, then his grip slipped as Xtreme wrapped an armoured hand round his wrist.

Neo felt his shoulder being dislocated as Xtreme pulled them to a rapid halt just above the fifth floor. They then began heading upward, Neo trying to pull himself up his own arm before Xtreme could tear it off completely.

They landed on top of another skyscraper, just next to the Terranew one. The rest of them had somehow landed on the same building, though from the broken slabs Shades and Zero had managed by leaping off the wall and landing hard. Both of them seemed to be in flight capable armour now though.

Clutching at his shoulder, Neo looked up, noticing that his shades had somehow managed to remain on his nose through the whole journey. He could just about make out the smashed window that they'd all jumped through, a blonde haired figure standing on the edge, just visible…

Alpha watched the Xtreme team leap through the window, turning quickly in case any of them tried anything against him. He could of course have easily taken on one of them without his armour, even if they were wearing theirs, but then again, that was only with several seconds notice.

As they vanished from sight, he jogged over to the hole and looked down. He'd of course always had a head for heights, such had been engineered into him.

He watched with interest as a pair of them had to use some kind of chain weapon to latch onto the side of the building, then push off and land on the next, significantly lower, skyscraper along. He'd been really impressed when, as he watched, the Timeforcer had managed to get a handhold on thin air and avoided death that way. He was of course surprised that he hadn't simply faded out of sight or some such, but apparently something had been done to his powers.

As the entire group landed on the skyscraper, Alpha heard a door burst open behind him and a set of claws scrabble on the floor for an instant.

Almost casually, he raised a hand. "Hold."

The guard behind him obviously saw and started to walk over to join him. As it walked over to the window, its footsteps changed gradually from the clack of claws knocking against each other, to the measured footsteps of someone who was a professional gymnast, and very sure of himself. Alpha wasn't willing to employ any other kind of guard because they generally couldn't handle the transformation.

"Are we letting them go sir?" Alpha caught sight of the guard out of the corner of his eye. He had black hair, blue eyes and dark skin. Terranew was of course an equal opportunities employer, even on worlds where it wasn't encouraged.

Sighing to himself, Alpha shook his head. "Make sure that the word goes round that we might soon have to move again. And while you're at it, order Tac-3 to get out and try to deal with the Reploids."

He looked down at his feet where he was standing on bits of broken glass. "And contact the glazier while you're down in reception."

Xtreme glanced round, surprised that no one had tried to bomb them out of existence yet. The Terranew building loomed overhead, seemingly totally devoid of menace.

"Do we teleport?"

"Fine idea," 84 said. "Unfortunately I have no doubt that our Reploid friend in there was the driver of the tank. I very much doubt that he blew up his only teleport inhibitor, so if we try, it could be fatal." He did something to something on the side of his helmet, then cocked his head as if listening to something. His throat moved as if he was speaking and Xtreme guessed that he was sub-vocalising.

After a few seconds, 84 shook his head. "There's an inhibitor active, not the same as the one the guard used on us, but if we try to leave we're in trouble. Guess at us getting at least five kilometres away before trying to use them."

"Five kilometres it is," Xtreme said. Angling himself away from the Terranew building, he walked to the edge of the building. "Those that can't fly, find someone to carry them." He felt Neo promptly grab onto his arm, then wince and clutch at his shoulder.

"I think you dislocated it when you grabbed me."

Xtreme took a careful look, then in a quick movement grasped Neo's arm and twisted hard. There was a click and Neo winced again, though this time he finished it off by rolling his shoulder round a couple of times. "Thanks."

Xtreme nodded. Getting round behind Neo, he hooked his arms under the Timeforcer's armpits then locked his hands together across his chest. Glancing back at the Terranew office block, he saw something he'd hoped wouldn't turn up.

"They've sent guards!" Jumping forwards, he leapt off the building, pulling Neo with him. They dived for an instant before the A-G field caught up with them and they soared up in time to see Jack hovering a few metres away, facing back, his E-Buster in Rapid-Fire mode and strafing across the sky.

Xtreme got a warning flashed in front of his eyes by his rear defence systems and barely had time to dodge before a bubbling green lump with lightning crawling across its surface shot past him. Neo yelled in surprise, though Xtreme was more interested in the shot and what it might have done to him.

Where the shot struck a building it didn't explode. It went splat. It then seemed to dissolve the roof of the building, sparks flying off it all the time.

He didn't have time to see any more as he detected another shot and, with renewed vigour, dodged the wrong way.

The green lump caught one of the stumpy 'wings' that formed the main part of his Falcon armour. He almost screamed as he felt the armour begin to dissolve, then heard Neo scream when the electricity began to jump across the surface of his armour, bypassing the non-conductive shielding beneath the Titanium-X alloy.

He was on the verge of passing out when he felt what he guessed from the sound was an E-Buster shot hit him.

84 had seen Xtreme hit by the green lumps and immediately done the only thing he could: attempt to burn the stuff off his armour with his E-Buster.

Surprisingly it seemed to work.

Admittedly Xtreme was knocked about quite a lot, but that did mean that he wasn't hit by the next shot and wasn't having his armour fried any more.

Dodging a shot himself, 84 glanced back up at the Gargoyle like guards that were circling around the Xtreme team. Most of them were grey, though one was brown instead. All of them seemed able to fire that green lumps from their mouths and 84 had little doubt that the razor edges of their wings would be able to slice his armour to shreds. They also seemed to be very strong, given the way that one of them had swatted aside Kieran, who had been a bit slow to avoid the blow. The kid was currently trying to get his A-G field under control and seemed to be winning, though not managing to go up.

Feeling they needed some kind of advantage, 84 switched his Dragon Armour over to its special capabilities, and began charging up.

Small lines of plasma began to appear, crawling over his armour, a second later. A second after that, he flung his arms wide apart, his head being flung back by the force of the blast.

A wall of plasma, a metre thick, appeared in front of him and shot away at speed. It glowed an interesting shade of red/ orange, while green flickers edged it in. 84 moved himself back further, as the blast wave hit two of the guards straight on, he switched to E-Buster and began letting loose with Medium Charge shots. He also started shooting with his Point Defence Nano-Cannons, trying to smother the Gargoyles before they could recover.

He seemed to manage to do little apart from hold them back and irritate them. He found this out when one of them which had been trying to gain height suddenly nose-dived at him and nearly ripped his arm off with its teeth.

Dodging sideways he flipped over in the air, then shot upwards. Looking around, he saw that Zero and Xtreme were taking it the hardest, largely because they were carrying, respectively, Trigger and Neo.

Firing again with his E-Buster, 84 dived at the nearest guard, bringing out his Time Shear Blades and slashing at the base of its wings, trying to avoid the rapidly flapping edges that would have reduced him to shreds.

The guard screamed and thrashed around in the air, catching 84 on the leg and nearly dislocating it.

Managing to right himself, he looked up in time to dodge sideways and not be hit by two shots from the guards. Glancing around he realised that he would need to move fast here.

Xtreme had managed to recover and was trying to gain altitude, but the guards weren't hindered by having to carry someone else (though the one that was missing a wing was having trouble hovering and kept dashing back and forth) and were making the most of it by diving at the rest of the team.

84 was trying to work out his next move, when Trigger pulled what was probably a very stupid move.

As Zero dodged to one side to avoid being hit by one of the guards, Trigger raised his left arm and fired off a silver beam of energy in the direction of one of them.

84 was dodging to one side even as the shot hit the guard. Unlike the last attempt where he'd nearly blinded them all, the guard seemed to actually feel the blast and it didn't immediately reflect off, apparently choosing to be absorbed by the guard instead.

The guard's scream rent the air for a couple of seconds, then it cast a baleful glare at Trigger which, if looks could kill, would have reduced him to cinders in an instant. In fact this was almost true.

Something looking very much like the Shining Laser shot out of both of the guard's eyes, moving at the speed of light so that Zero didn't stand a chance of dodging it. The shot hit Trigger rather than Zero, bringing up huge black marks across his chest and actually exposing some of Trigger's inner workings as it burnt through the outer armour, non-conductive under-layer and half a dozen more subtle forms of shielding. Trigger screamed right from the first instant, and for several minutes after the attack stopped.

As the inner workings became visible, the guard ceased its attack. It didn't seem to be exhausted, like a creature that had just used up the last of reserves. It grinned like someone that had just discovered they had more energy reserves and capabilities than they'd guessed.

As Zero tried to manoeuvre himself out of their line of fire, the other guards began to grin as well, then all of them began firing laser beams around.

84 was still dodging and so merely got clipped across one leg. From the sounds though, most of the others hadn't been ready for it. Hopefully Neo hadn't been targeted. In his current state this attack would go through him as if he wasn't there, which would, at least for the parts of him that were hit, be true.

84 landed heavily on one of the nearby rooftops, slightly alarmed that they hadn't managed to get any further than the next skyscraper so far.

Rolling, he decided that a change was in order.

"Geiran armour."

His vision was obliterated for an instant by the light of transformation, then when it returned, he felt heavier, but a lot stronger.

Both of his E-Busters sprang into life, charging up for a full shot. Aiming haphazardly, he fired at one of the guards, hitting it hard with both of the shots.

The guard seemed to be enjoying itself too much to notice him till too late and one of the shots caught its wing straight on while the other got it in the back. The guard screamed for an instant, then dropped as its wing was turned inside out and its legs, which it had been using as a rudder of sorts, were whipped out from beneath it as its body was forced forwards.

84 was charging as soon as he could and before any of the guards had even turned to face him had fired at another of them.

Zero dodged hard to one side as another shot hit Trigger, this time cutting into his leg and nearly severing it.

He hadn't banked on something like this when he'd suggested that they raid the Terranew office. He hadn't actually banked on having any trouble. Dodging something that would have gone through him in a matter of seconds, wasn't on his agenda for the day.

Landing on the surface of the skyscraper next to 84, Zero dropped Trigger, landed a couple of metres further on, rolled and came up firing.

The Z-Buster shots didn't even seem to bother the guard he targeted, annoying him personally more than anything.

As one of the guards began to look round at him, he gave up on the Z-Buster, and took a running Air-Dash at a point slightly to the left of the guard, his Z-Sabre almost jumping into his hand from its sheaf on his back then being held out to his right so that it sliced through the guard's wing.

The guard screamed as Zero reactivated his A-G system and flipped round in mid-air so that he could see the result of his work. He was expecting to see the guard falling fast, but instead the tear in its wing was healing rapidly, and it was grinning again.

Before he'd had a chance to work out what it was grinning about, it showed him.

In a flurry of flaps, it shot at him, the edge of one wing developing a glow as it did. He was already dodging to one side when the wing hit him, edge on. It caught him across the waist and sliced through his armour.

He almost lost control of his A-G system as a ten centimetre deep cut was made in the right side of his waist. As the guard flew on he grasped a hand to his waist, feeling around to make sure he wasn't suffering too badly.

Armour Efficiency: 75%

Control To Right Leg: Lost

Power Flow To Lower Limbs: 59%

Rerouting Power/ Control: Unknown Time

Internal Sparking/ Leakages: None

Repair Systems Active…

He heard rather than saw the next guard come at him from behind, its scream of almost joy tearing at his ears.

Dodging, he thrust out his Z-Sabre in what he hoped was the direction of the guard. This time the wing missed him and caught the Z-Sabre's energy blade. As the guard passed he saw that he hadn't actually damaged it at all.

Directing himself towards the skyscraper again, he landed next to 84, feeling very aware of the numb feeling in his right leg. He didn't know as much about his own innards as Kyle did, but he guessed that damage like that would need more than a bit of rerouting to get him fully operational again.

"What the hell keeps happening? They're getting better all the time!"

84 cast a glance at him, then went back to shooting. "They must be able to rewrite whatever passes for their genetics almost at will, learning new tricks from us the same way we could develop a new armour program. The problem there is that because they are basically an amorphous personification of someone's idea of a Gargoyle, we can't get any kind of pattern off them, or any other guard."

The pair of them dived in opposite directions as three guards focussed their laser attacks on them at the same time.

"Are you saying," Zero yelled as he picked himself up and began to return fire, "that Trigger taught them how to use lasers and I taught them how to do that thing with their wings?"

"You're a trend-setter," 84 yelled back at him as he kept up a steady rate of fire. "I just hope they can't pass on this information too far or all the guard's they send up against us might be able to do this."

Zero grimaced, realising that almost anything apart from what they'd already done would only cause more trouble.

"Well let's get their attention a bit more," Zero muttered darkly.

Turning sharply, using his right leg as a pivot, he brought up his Z-Sabre and fired a medium shot in the direction of the Terranew office.

He rolled to avoid a shot, then got to his feet in time to see the shot hit some kind of invisible shield that caused ripples in the air about a metre away from the actual surface of the office.

He was still gaping at the office block when his combat computer started getting shrill at him.

Diving, he barely managed to avoid the laser attack, then when he rolled and fired he missed as his right leg threw him off balance.

Dodging around, he continued to fire, hoping for a lucky hit.

Xtreme had landed as well, hoping for a chance to use some of his other armours on the ground. He'd seen Zero being badly sliced, and his failed attempt to take on the office block.

Now was the chance to hit back. And right now, revenge was a dish best served…

Cold.

"Ice Shotgun."

The alternate weapon formed in place of his X-Buster. Bringing it up, trying to ignore the sudden chill in his arm, he aimed at one of the guards and fired off several shots.

The first shot hit the guard's wing, forming a contour-following block of ice around it. The other shots piled up across its wing, freezing it in place.

The guard fell and crashed down on the next skyscraper along.

Leaping onto the railing that bordered the edge of the roof and balancing neatly there, Xtreme lined up for another shot with the Ice Shotgun.

Before he could fire, the guard was climbing to its feet, ice shattering off its wings, raising its hand as if about to throw something at him. As he brought his arm up to fire, a faint white glow appeared in the guard's hand, which quickly turned into a snowball of sorts.

As Xtreme fired, the guard brought its arm forward and hurled the snowball at him.

Xtreme didn't see what his shot did to the guard, as the snowball the guard had thrown expanded as it approached him so that it went from being about twenty centimetres across to almost a metre across when it hit him.

Knocked backwards, Xtreme landed in a rapidly expanding pile of snow. He could feel an unnatural cold digging into him, suck the heat out of his armour, not to mention getting into his systems. The hole in the back of his armour, where the guard's laser attack had got him was thankfully covered, otherwise this could have made a real mess of his innards.

Exterior Temperature: 150°K and falling

Pushing hard, fighting against joints that were almost frozen solid, Xtreme pushed at the snow that was hardening into ice, his hand breaking out for an instant before being covered by the growing pile. He could feel the ice beginning to crush him as he pushed.

Getting desperate, he tried to bring his X-Buster round to point up, and found it frozen in place at his side. With his last reserves of strength, he fired it.

The sudden shock of heat nearly killed him. If that wasn't bad enough the fact that the entire ice block he was encased in tried to tear itself in opposite directions, nearly tearing him in half as well, made things worse.

But he found that he could move again, even if it was only to a limited degree.

Pushing hard, he dived upwards until his head broke through the snow at the top of the pile.

Surely there can't be this much snow.

He'd found himself at the top of a three metre high pile that was starting to melt around him.

Air-Dashing vertically, he shot out of the pile, flipped over in mid-air and landed a couple of metres away from the base of the pile.

Turning fast, he saw that the rest of the guard's had apparently developed the same trick again and were throwing snowballs all over the place.

"Flame Thrower."

Using the fiery weapon, Xtreme attacked the most suspect piles, revealing in a matter of seconds the forms of Zero, X and a guard that had been caught by friendly fire.

Managing to vaporise three snowballs that were aimed at him, Xtreme turned his Flame Thrower's attention to the nearest guard.

Hitting it square in the face, he was pleased by the way it screamed in pain, then worried by the way that it looked down at him and grinned when he stopped firing.

Before he could consider, the guard raised one massive hand, and clicked its fingers, its eyes locked firmly with his.

External Armour Temperature: 600°K and Rising

Xtreme looked down and saw that lines of fire were crawling across the lower half of his armour. Already the blue armour was glowing slightly redder in places and there was a faint scorch mark across one leg.

Diving sideways, Xtreme hastily blew at his legs, trying to put out the flames that were going at him. All this seemed to do was encourage them though.

Switching to his Ice Shotgun again, he aimed a shot at the ground next to his feet, which promptly froze over, along with his legs. The flames that were circling around his waist lasted for a few seconds longer but vanished all the same. In the instant that he was stuck there waiting, Xtreme was hit in the shoulder by a laser attack that nearly removed his arm.

Shades had manage to dodge most of the attacks, including the laser and ice attacks. This was largely because he'd been circling lower and lower until he regained control of his A-G system and could make a comeback.

Now that he had it, he rocketed upwards, hoping against hope that he wasn't too late to Save The Day, or something heroic like that.

As he went up, he noticed that something else was heading up the side of the office block that they were on. Had it chosen a better place to ascend, he might have mistaken it for an outside lift or something similar in his haste. As it was its colour scheme gave it away; grey and purple, with rows of spikes, mouths and eyes laid out like contour markings.

It reached the top at the same time he did, slightly sooner in fact. It was already onto the solid roof by the time he landed several metres away, slightly amazed that it was still vertical.

It was roughly cylindrical, with, as has been pointed out, spikes, mouths and eyes acting as some kind of contour marks. It was almost three metres tall and a metre wide. The spikes must have added almost half a metre on each side, while each mouth was at least twenty centimetres wide, circular and rimmed with what looked like hundreds of needle-like teeth.

Shades was aware that the others were spread across two rooftops, and that he was almost alone on this one barring two Gargoyles, Neo, Xtreme, a large pile of rapidly melting snow and the new, what he guessed to be, Guard.

As he wasn't yet preoccupied in some way, such as being half buried by a pile of snow, he was the only one who noticed that as if responding to an unspoken command, the Gargoyle-guards suddenly landed and put their fingers in their ears, cowering slightly as they did.

Feeling that just this once, peer pressure might well be a good thing to follow, Shades made a quick gesture past his right ear and deactivated his audio pickups.

He was almost too late.

As his hand passed what would have been his ear had he not been in armour, the new guard opened all three rows of mouths at once and…

Shades didn't hear what happened next, fortunately for him. He felt it though. It felt as if every part of his nervous system was in a state of bliss, as if the world was suddenly a perfect place and he had no cares in it.

It wasn't perfect though. There was an edge to the feeling, as if not all of it was there. Bringing up a quick check, he saw on his internal diagnostic that it was quite noisy outside his armour all of a sudden.

Guessing that the guard must be doing something, Shades looked round at the other Reploids.

All of them, including one Gargoyle that apparently hadn't got its fingers in its ears fast enough, were simply standing there, swaying in time to the graphic display of the sound around him that Shades had hovering in front of his retina.

Except Neo. The Timeforcer had turned round and was slowly staggering in the direction of the new guard, something close to rapture spread across his face.

Uncertain about what was going on, but unwilling to wait and find out, Shades brought his X-Buster into existence and aimed a medium charge shot at the guard while running in the direction of the nearest Gargoyle and pulling out his Z-Sabre.

The shot struck the guard at about its mid-point. It seemed to bend double, like a folding ruler, the noise around them suddenly cutting off. Still running, Shades brought his Z-Sabre round and managed to cut the head off one Gargoyle before it could manage to stand up and look round like the others were doing.

Around him, and on the other roof, the guards were straightening up in a confused manner, while the Xtreme team seemed to be in an even worse state.

Turning round while still running, Shades headed back to the new guard. As he approached, he saw the spiny form blur and flow into different shapes, eventually coming together to form…

Shades would, he admitted to himself, have preferred the guard to change into a monster. The creatures of the Black Lands might have been hard to kill, but at least you knew where you were with them, even if it was a badly charred grave.

He would have preferred that to what did turn up.

The receptionist.

Her hair was now a mess and blood was issuing from various wounds. Her uniform was in tatters.

Human eyes looked up at him, rimmed in blood. He looked into the depth of them and couldn't find even a trace of a suggestion that this person might want to hurt anyone.

In that instant, he did something that he shouldn't have done.

He hesitated.

An E-Buster shot caught the receptionist in the chest at the same time that something very cold caught Shades very hard in the back, knocking him off the edge of the building.

84 was diving hard when he fired at the receptionist. He'd learnt the hard way that hesitating would get you nothing except an early burial when dealing with the Guards. Certainly Shades would probably he learning that lesson, especially with the help of that snowball.

He wasn't quite sure what had just happened, though he did intent to look over it very thoroughly when he got back home. He could remember cursing Xtreme under his breath for trying out different weapons, had spotted the guards land, and had been half way to cutting off his audio reception when…

To put it bluntly it had felt like bliss. He wasn't quite sure how long it had lasted, though his internal chronometer showed that it hadn't been too long.

Bringing out his Time Shear Blades, he started to spin again, managing to slice one of the guards into about six different pieces.

Landing, he saw that five of the guard's were still standing, or hovering at least.

All of the Reploids had suffered some damaged by now he realised, whereas the guards were still going strong. The only thing they could be thankful for was that the guards didn't seem to be able to reproduce a full charge X-Buster shot.

As he stood there for that instant, 84 heard one of the guards land behind him. He was diving out of the way by the time his enhanced hearing picked up the sound of a pair of large fingers being clicked.

Sensors detected a wave of heat as it passed his foot, and as he landed he saw lines of fire appear round one of the chest of one of the guards.

That guard yelled something incoherent at his attacker, who yelled something back, then threw a snowball at him. In the few seconds of distraction, 84 had spun round, bringing both E-Busters round and going for a full charge shot with both of them.

He was flung back by the force of the recoil, while the guard vanished in the middle of turning to see where the power-build-up whine was coming from.

When he became visible again, he was plastered against the wall of the small building that housed the lift and stairs that led onto the roof.

84 lined up for another shot, then grinned beneath his helmet as the guard began to fall apart.

Turning and firing at another guard, he caught it on the legs rather than the chest, as it took off before he could re-aim. This still caused it to flip over in mid-air, where its head was cut in half by Zero with his Z-Sabre.

Two down, three to go. Two on this building, one on the next.

Taking a run at the next one, 84 tried something he wouldn't normally have done: he tried to do a Quadruple Dash at a target ten metres away.

He managed to break the sound barrier as he hit the guard, meaning that it hurt both of them even more. It also meant that the sonic boom propelled the guard off the rooftop as well as 84's attack.

They hit the outside wall of the next building along less than a second later, cracking the concrete very badly and bringing them both to an abrupt halt, almost fifty floors above the pavement.

The guard gave him a very intelligent look as they both hung, wedged into the dent in the concrete wall. Neither moved, till the wall gave way and they began to plummet.

Before he could move, the guard brought a grey skinned hand round hard against his back.

Spinal Data-Line: Damaged: Communication Below Shoulder-Blades Lost

Repair Systems Active…

He could feel the guard pushing at him, despite not being able to sense anything below his chest. Utilising what little control he still had, he brought both arms up, not using his fists, but the Time Shear Blades.

Both of the guards, arms were cut off, along with large parts of both wings. Certainly it wouldn't be flying anywhere soon, though with his spinal column in that state, even if he could activate his Dragon Armour, he wouldn't be able to actually control the A-G field and so would probably be in just as much trouble.

As he began to fall, the guard screaming in his face, he scrabbled for a hold on the sides of the dent in the wall. But the guard was a tad too big, and he couldn't get his arms round it.

As the pair of them began to accelerate, he guessed that the guard, which was in a very bad state, would probably be killed by the impact with the ground. Of course his own fate as a result of the fall, would be pretty uncertain. At the best of times he would have been unsure about sure a trick, knowing that he could survive but only if he didn't mind being badly shaken as a result. With his armour in its current state, he'd probably be dead.

Probably, he thought sourly.

Buoyed by the force of the air around it, his body turned on one side, both legs hanging freely while his arms began to lag behind him.

Just as the guard got far enough below him that it wouldn't have been able to grab him even if it had wanted, he felt his arm snag on something.

The abrupt halt left him dizzy for a minute, then he frowned, and found himself wondering what he'd caught his arm on.

Looking up, he found himself gazing at a bird, with a wing-span on maybe two or three feet. It was scruffy, the sort that you would normally have guessed couldn't even fly without some kind of jet engine. A mess of brown, grey, and dull black feathers was spread across it, making it look like some kind of custom shaped pillow rather than a bird.

A long brown beak poked out of the feathers that adorned what was probably its head, while two black eyes looked down at him, with a sort of intelligence that he wouldn't have suspected a bird could have.

There was a movement above the bird's head, and a familiar face crowned with a top hat popped round the bird's shoulder and looked down at him.

"Warwick?!"

The monkey grinned down at him. We heard you're cries of help and decided that you might as well owe us for this one.

"I didn't called for help," 84 said.

The bird swivelled one independently mounted eye round to look at him. "So you don't want help?"

84 blinked, then swallowed. "I do want help. I just wasn't expecting any quite that soon."

The bird's left eye swivelled round to face Warwick while its right eye kept focussed on 84's face. "Shall we pick him up closer to the ground, boss?"

Warwick grinned down at him, then shook his head. What's the point? Let's head up and join the others. I think this party's about over now.

The bird flapped a bit harder, and in seconds they were back up on level with rooftop where the others were trying to pick themselves up.

Just as the bird dropped his feet to the ground, 84 looked back up at it. "Before you drop me, please realise that I don't currently have any control over my lower half."

The bird flapped a bit higher, then swivelled both eyes round to examine him. "That must make straining your wossname a bit difficult then."

A frown crossed 84's features then became a glare. "Warwick, who is this?"

The monkey gave him a cheeky grin, then leaped down to 84's shoulder. This is Kwaith. He's been acting as my personal transport for a while now, I've just never got round to bringing him to the Earth.

Warwick turned and slid down 84's back. As he did, the damage to his spine repaired itself and Kwaith dropped him.

He landed in a crouch and looked round. He was on the same rooftop as Trigger, Zero and X. As he glanced round again, Shades shot up the side of the building and landed next to him, while Xtreme ferried Neo over from the other building.

The pair of them landed, Neo being forced into a roll as Xtreme didn't get enough lift and nearly took his head off by mistake. When the Timeforcer looked up again, his eyes settled on Kwaith, who had also landed and was preening himself, or making more of a mess of his feathers.

"Oh wow!" He said. "You've got a Darrow Raven! I always wanted one of them as a pet!"

Kwaith swivelled one eye round to look at Neo. "Pet yourself, bub. I'm only in this for the intestines."

Neo blinked, then grinned even wider. "You're a talking Darrow?"

Kwaith rolled his eyes, an impressive trick when done by someone who can get them to do a three sixty degree turn. "No, of course not. It's just a figment of your imagination."

Warwick had settled himself onto a stool that he'd pulled out of nowhere. "Yeah, after all, everyone knows birds can't talk. Same as monkeys."

Neo glared at the pair of them. "I know some Darrows can talk. I just wasn't expecting to meet a talking one."

X looked closer at the bird. "I didn't know you could get talking bird at all."

"I hate to break up the ornithology lesson," 84 said. "But shouldn't we be getting back to my place. We could be in trouble if they send another team and I'm not sure that some of us are in a position to do anything against them." He looked down at Trigger, who still had a hole in his chest and a huge cut burnt through one leg.

Xtreme nodded. "Let's go."

Chapter 8 – Swimming Lessons

The night was hard.

Trigger was a difficult point. With his more advanced systems, he was next to impossible to treat because none of them was sure how his armour worked. The best they could do was hook him up to some of the diagnostic equipment, recalibrate it for his systems, and hope.

The others were easier. Scorch marks, freeze/ thaw action, nearly missing limbs, laser holes and shattered armour were relatively easy to fix and all of the team were soon outfitted with more advanced repair/ regeneration gear to sort them out.

Jack settled himself down slowly, wincing at the feeling in his back. The only problem with your armour enhancing you when you weren't in it, was that damage tended to be transferred as well. Not enough to really injure him, but enough that he knew it had happened.

Warwick had vanished before they'd even left the rooftop. Kwaith though had stayed and helped to carry Xtreme, who's flight system was getting to be touchy with half the A-G field generators missing.

The Darrow Raven was currently getting through several large pieces of red meat, with surprising speed and efficiency.

Glancing across at Trigger, who was on the sofa that Kyle had spent his first night here, Jack felt a twinge of sadness. The kid still wasn't out of school yet but he'd been allowed to go on this trip with the rest of them because none of them had really believed that anything could go wrong and anyway he had good armour so what could go wrong?

Ha, Jack thought sourly. What could go wrong is that you should have checked out what was going on before trying anything.

"So what's a bird like you doing in a place like this," Zero asked from his position a couple of sofas away from Jack.

Kwaith swivelled one eye round, then seemed to blur and vanish.

"Wath dat a joke?" Kwaith's voice was slightly distorted as he had Zero's ear in his beak. "Don't nod."

The Maverick Hunter had frozen, a look close to shock across his face. "No, no."

Kwaith let go of Zero's ear and hopped up onto the back of the sofa. "Good." There was another blur and the Darrow was back by his bowl of meat. When he spotted them all looking at him, he straighten up a bit. "What?"

"How did you move that fast," said Zero, then quickly put his hands over his ears in case he was attacked again.

Kwaith cocked his head on one side and seemed to consider Zero. "I'll admit that all this faster-than-time flying is hard, but then again being intelligent enough to know how and when to speak, which is more than most Humans do, ain't easy either."

"What are you anyway?" Kyle kept his eyes closed when he spoke, apparently trying to rest his arm and shoulder. Even as a Human there were still scars from where the attack had burnt through his shoulder.

Kwaith turned his head this time rather than just an eye, though this might have been so that he could see all of them rather than half of the room. "I'm a Darrow Raven, okay?"

Kyle nodded slowly, still not opening his eyes.

"Darrow Ravens don't exist on the Earth normally. We evolved on this little world called Trisnarus. When some Humans got round to colonising it, they checked us out and found a species with no natural predators, almost no hunting capability, a few very weird ideas about nesting and not much in the way of a diet.

"That had them a bit stumped, particularly when they started to find that some of the people they sent out to get food never came back with Darrow Raven for tea. In fact their hunters even went out of their way not to kill us, which made them reconsider that whole thing about predators."

Kwaith paused while he got his beak round a tough bit of meat and used a claw to pull it off. He then tossed it in the air and swallowed it in a single gulp.

"Then of course, they sent some scientists out to look for us. They then had this problem of the scientists coming make, having made such notes as 'species appears to have been extinct for several years', then complaining that they couldn't have written it, because we weren't extinct."

"So what was happening?" Kyle opened an eye and looked at Kwaith through it, probably checking that the bird was still there.

"Simple. Somewhere back in our genetics, we learnt to manipulate time. When hunters went looking for us, we'd already heard them shooting so we were always out of the way. When scientists came looking, we jumped them into the future so that they thought we were extinct.

"Of course the whole thing was instinctive, us not being naturally cognitive and all, but that sort of thing takes its toll. After a few years, I was born, with chronic intelligence. None of the rest of my species were able to share a decent conversation, so I talked to Humans. That caused trouble for all of us and Warwick pulled me out of a lab just as one of their scientists decided to turn some kind of high-tech scalpel on me."

Kyle nodded and closed his eyes again, apparently satisfied. Then he opened the other one a couple of seconds later. "Just one last thing…"

"What?"

"Are you an Interfacer?"

Kwaith screeched what was probably meant to be a laugh. "Me? One of them lot? No chance. I admit I can do some of their tricks, but that's about it."

Kyle smiled at him, then apparently went to sleep.

Kwaith wolfed down the last of the meat, then looked over at Jack, expectantly.

"Don't get your hopes up," Jack said. "If you're that hungry then turn time back and eat that lot again."

Kwaith glared at him, then flapped into the air and vanished upstairs.

"Today was not a good idea," said Zero after a couple of minutes.

"Not the part that you organised," Jack agreed. He lay back and tried to ignore Zero's glare. "I will admit that the first part of it was quite good though."

Trigger groaned in his sleep and Jack cast a glance at him. The whole in his chest was healing well, and the hole in his leg was now defined by a thin web of blue armour where the surface should have been and a slightly cleaner looking charred mess inside that. With luck he would be better within a couple of days.

"So what do we do now?" X was rearranging cushions on the sofa as he spoke, apparently willing to risk making an early night of it in the middle of the afternoon.

"Depends," Jack said. "We could stay here for the night. That's my personal favourite right now. Then of course we could try to attack Terranew again. If anyone makes a serious suggestion of that then I'll kill them. If a Portal tries to open we could do something about that, then come back here…"

An alarm went off.

"Bugger it! Talk about tempting Fate."

X opened and eye and saw the sensor screen that hung next to the clock. A bright yellow light was flashing on it.

"That means we're going out again this evening, doesn't it," he said, in the tone of one who hopes that someone will correct him.

"Could be," Jack said. "Then again if Terranew are going to switch universe…"

Brushing his hair out of his eyes, X got up and followed Jack over to the sensor screen. Jack fiddled with it for a few seconds, then the image changed to show a closer view of the light.

"It's in the middle of town… Actually forget that… It's in the middle of the Sea Life Centre."

"Great, let's go fishing." Zero had wandered over to join them.

It seemed though, that they were not to only ones to be disturbed by the alarms.

"What's going on," Kwaith yelled as he appeared, flapping madly, in the air above Zero's head.

"We've got a portal on the screen," Jack said. "Think you could find Angelo or Warwick?"

"Definitely. Getting them to come might be a problem." Kwaith seemed to flap a little faster, then blurred and was gone.

X looked at the screen. "That doesn't look good."

"You're more right than you think," Jack said. "This portal looks like it might open of its own accord. That's a very bad thing."

"We'd better get there then," X said.

"You, Kieran and I perhaps," Jack replied. "Trigger's laid out for a couple of days at least, Zero's got a scar across his waist and a numb leg, Kyle's got trouble with his shoulder, Neo's useless in this sort of situation…"

"Fine, we'd better get going then," Kieran said. They all tried to ignore the protests of Zero, who was limping.

"Easier said than done. The Sea Life Centre is built right on the coast. If these things come through they'll probably be aquatic, or amphibious."

"We can breath underwater," X pointed out.

"That's fine, but can you fight underwater? I know that my E-Buster isn't nearly as effective unless you fire it at really close range."

"We'll think of something," Kieran said. "Hadn't we better be going though?"

X watched Jack take a deep breath. "Let's go."

They teleported down into the entrance hall of the Sea Life Centre, and found that they were already too late.

People who were already obviously panicked by something, didn't take well to the sudden appearance of a blue, red and orange bolt of light that solidified into an armoured figure.

"Trouble's that way," X said, indicating the largest of the pools that everyone was heading away from.

Utilising Reploid skill and ingenuity, the three of them leapt from table, to desk to chair, till they reached the door that led out into the open.

"Why did you do that?" Shades asked as they all reached the door.

"Do what," 84 asked.

"You paid for a ticket."

"Three tickets," he was corrected. 84 handed the pair of them a ticket each and slid a brochure into a crack in his armour where it glowed, then vanished.

They stepped out into the open, and saw something that none of them had managed to see before.

In the middle of the largest pool, which was only normally cut off from the ocean by a sheet of heavily reinforced glass, was a whirlpool, at least twenty metres wide, as if someone had pulled the plug out of the bottom of the tank. Given the glass had vanished, this would probably have led to the world's oceans draining slowing into the Black lands. Fortunately though, what looked like a fountain gushed out enough water that they were probably gaining more than they were loosing.

Amongst the things that they were gaining, was a number of creatures straight out of the Black Lands.

Something that looked like a massive grey Walrus, complete with two metre long tusks and red go-faster stripes, had managed to evade the whirlpool and was pulling itself onto the concrete. The railings, designed to stop people getting into the pool, was scattered around the place, as if the Walrus had decided to knock it aside then climb up, rather than simply belly-flopping it flat when it jumped out.

The tusks looked nasty, and could certainly do the three of them some damage if the way they were gouging ruts in the concrete was anything to go by.

"Okay, let's be calm about this," said 84 slowly.

"You mean blow it to bits?"

"Yes," he agreed. "But methodically."

All three raised their arms and rapid-fire shots began to pepper the hide of the Walrus. It didn't seem to notice initially, then turned a huge head towards them, and stared.

Shades found himself looking more carefully at its eyes, telling himself the whole time that he was only wondering what was wrong with them. He noticed what was wrong of course. They glowed. Bright red in fact. And when he looked a bit closer he noticed that they weren't just glowing, but swirling…

The next thing he was aware of was a massive flipper catching him across the chest and sending him through the wall of the reception area, Mega Man X and 84 beside him.

"What the hell just happened?!"

84 was already back on his feet and firing again. "Must have some kind of limited telepathic abilities. Couple that with the ability to make your eyes glow and you've got instant hypnosis. Just don't look at its eyes like that again."

Shades nodded fervently, then charged up to medium and fired at the thing's tusk. The shot seemed to wrap itself round the tusk and surround it for a few seconds before vanishing.

"Great," 84 declared. "Some kind of variable magnetic field around its tusks. That means it could probably tear us to pieces just by waving them close enough to us."

Shades looked closer at the tusks, then aimed a medium shot at the Walrus's eye.

The shot caught it in the eye, causing it to reel back for an instant, then to look back at them.

No, it's staring.

Shades could feel his gaze being drawn to its eyes again, could see the red glow becoming a swirling pattern…

The sight was obscured by an E-Buster shot that caught the Walrus on the nose.

"Didn't your mother teach you it's rude to stare?!" 84 yelled this, then punctuated the exclamation mark with a medium shot.

The Walrus seemed to admit defeat and turned away from them. Shades paused in his attack, caught off guard by the apparently defeated monster.

Then he realised what it was doing.

Several people had managed to trap themselves in short passageway that ended in a locked door. The Walrus heaved itself over to them and looked down at them.

Even without it looking at him and at a range of almost twenty metres, Shades could still feel the pull, the urge to stare back into its gaze…

84 elbowed him in the chest, bringing him out of his semi-daze. He looked down and saw what the Walrus had been up to.

The people that had been huddling together in the doorway had stood up and were walking towards the three of them, a slightly glazed expression on their faces.

"Oh no, now that's just not fair," Shades complained. "Are they going to attack us?"

"We can't afford to find out," muttered 84 darkly. He raised his E-Buster and before Shades or X could stop him, fired.

What he fired though, wasn't a normal shot. This shot jammed into the Walrus's hide and began to burn, very brightly.

Shades covered his eyes, hoping that his visor had cut out the worst of the effects of the flare that 84 had fired.

The Walrus bellowed, while the people that had been walking towards them yelled in surprise and, according to his Radar Optics, collapsed to the floor.

It wasn't a loud explosion, just a very bright and continuous one. It was in fact almost thirty seconds before Shades could lower his hand and look round again.

The Walrus had collapsed and was beginning to fall to bits as they watched, a hole burnt into one side of its body by the flare.

"Nice trick."

"I wasn't quite expecting that sort of effect," 84 admitted.

"Lets forget the congratulation for now," X said. "I suspect we've still got at least one more to get through."

"At least," 84 agreed, starting to run round towards the ocean side of the pool, then diving in without checking.

As he dived, 84 felt his internal systems rebuild themselves to work underwater. Not needing to breath was useful, as was the fact that he couldn't rust, but sometimes his body needed reminding of that.

He settled on the bottom, then looked round while he waited for the other pair.

Nothing seemed to be out of place down here, or so he hoped. He'd never gotten round to looking down here, having never considered that the Black Lands might produce an aquatic Creature.

Shades and X caught up with him at the same time that he spotted the next Creature.

This one looked like some kind of Stingray, though almost twenty metres wide and with lots of mouths filled with teeth across its underside rather than just the usual toothless one. It also had more tails, which it waved around like tentacles. As it glided through the water, neatly avoiding the underside of the fountain, it didn't seem to cause even the slightest disturbance.

Settling himself into a hole that was along its route, 84 aimed his E-Buster directly upwards and waited.

As it passed over him, he fired straight up into one of its central mouths, then pushed himself out of the hole and swam for all he was worth away from it.

Underwater his E-Buster was pretty useless, as were the X-Busters of the other pair. Water was a very good cooling material and the pressure wave as it was super-heated by the Plasma shot generally did more damage than the shot itself.

Barely avoiding a tentacle that jabbed at him, 84 tried to swim up a submerged cliff face to avoid further attacks. The other pair were nearby, of that he was sure, but what they were planning he wasn't sure of.

Gaining sufficient height, he spun round and saw the Creature coming right at him, its maw open and easily big enough to swallow him in a single gulp.

Trying to Dash underwater was probably a bad idea, but seemed to work this time. Shooting out of the water, flipping over and diving back in, changing armour as he did.

The Shark Armour wasn't a very original design, he knew. But at least it was designed to work underwater.

Something like flippers formed around his feet, while his E-Buster changed in subtle ways as well. Contrary to the name, he didn't develop a dorsal fin.

Speeding down, along its upper surface, he levelled out and carried on till he was further out to sea before turning. The Creature might have been fast, but couldn't turn too well in a confined space.

Indeed, it was quite a way behind him when he stopped. Levelling what would have been an E-Buster at it, he fired.

This time, instead of the usual shot, a bubble, elongated to almost a metre long, shot out and hit the Creature between the eyes.

Even from close to fifty metres away, 84 was still shaken by the shockwave from the depth charge. The Creature was thrown around badly enough that it drifted down to the bottom and lay there, apparently badly injured.

Feeling that it wasn't quite finished yet, 84 chose to fire a couple more for good measure, grinning in a satisfied way when it began to dissolve.

Now where are the others.

X had dived in after 84 with Shades, and seen the Creature that looked like a Stingray just as he had. When he hid though, they'd encountered a third Creature.

Something that was almost invisible had simply fallen on them, keeping them pinned where they were while 84 did a runner. X had tried to push himself free, then been startled by the result.

Some kind of light show had started up, just in front of his face. It was an odd pattern, various different colours, moving in what looked like random sequences. Turning his head he could see more of the same, almost totally obliterating his view of Shades, who seemed to be similarly stuck a few metres away.

Looking up again, X tried to push against the strange substance that was holding him down. It yielded a bit, then pushed back while the lights began to increase in number and the pattern of fading in, fading out and moving around began to speed up.

X was wondering what was actually happening, till he felt something brush along his arm. As it did he winced as what felt like dozens of bards went through his armour and probably his X-Buster's fire controls.

Trying to force himself up, through the stuff that was pinning him, he found he couldn't move. His limbs were pressed into the floor now by more than the weight that held them. He was startled when he almost didn't want to get up.

That mood was lost when something brushed along his leg, causing a similar feeling of dozens of barbs being jabbed into it to that which he'd had before.

Pushing against limbs that seemed to be trying to push back at him in their effort to stay where they were, X managed to force himself onto an elbow.

As he did it the patterns of light began to speed up again and X became aware that the ground was vibrating slowly beneath him. Counting fast, he realised that it was close to two or three a second, the frequency of the Human brain when it was at rest. It was an old idea, to subject a Human brain to such a frequency, because after a couple of minutes the brain would fall in line and you could knock someone out.

Thank goodness for Reploid AI systems not being similarly affected.

But of course Shades didn't have a Reploid AI. He had a Human brain, in Reploid armour and no amount of cutting out your audio receptors could save you from this onslaught.

Forcing himself up again brought up more lights, which was probably the part of this attack that had got to him, and brought his other arm into contact with something that jammed more bards into it.

Looking down at his arm, trying not to attract the attention of any more bards, he saw what looked like a dozen thorny vines sticking out of holes in his armour.

Worried, he pushed himself harder, scrabbling towards Shades. This worked well until something that he could only see because it was a different colour from the parts of whatever it was behind it, brushed against his side.

This time there was only one vine, and he barely felt it at all. In fact when it went in he felt almost light-headed. He began to slump, then shook his head and tried to push himself up.

What is happening?

Dark Angelo stepped out of a wall, leaving only the slightest ripple in it to show that anything had been wrong.

Looking round, he could see the whirlpool and fountain were already dying away, while the devastation settled.

He was still looking around, when he saw 84 break the surface, flip over in mid-air and land on the concrete. His friend was in some kind of aquatic armour, which vanished in a flash of light as he spotted Angelo, followed an instant later by the rest of his armour.

"Have you seen X or Shades?"

"No, then again I just got here."

Pulling his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket, Angelo slipped them on and used the inside, mirror-like surface, as something like a crystal ball, looking round, using any surface as the other end.

There wasn't much area to search locally of course. Unfortunately if they weren't there, then they were probably in the Black Lands…

"Found them," Angelo said. Keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the pair of Maverick Hunters, he began to walk towards them across the concrete, till he felt Jack's gaze on his neck. "What now?"

"Look down," Jack suggested.

Angelo removed his sunglasses and looked down.

He was standing on a patch of water which, unlike the rest of the tank, was as stiff as ice, though a lot harder to walk on.

"What? You've never seen someone walk on water before?" Angelo was slightly annoyed at himself for not noticing that he had been doing it.

Jack shook his head and took a running jump at the patch of still water. It rippled slightly as he landed, but the patch spread rather than breaking.

"Not quite like this," he admitted.

Angelo shook his head and slipped his sunglasses back on. Looking back at Shades and X, he almost jumped. "Armour up, they're in trouble."

As a glow started up behind him, he went into a standing dive and barely caused a ripple as he went under the water. As they touched the water, his cloths reshaped themselves to become a copy of the traditional Atlantian battle armour, though without the usual helmet.

When they'd designed the armour the Atlantians had been looking for something that would impress other people and would allow them to go as easily underwater as they did normally above water. More easily in fact, owing to the exoskeleton and various chemicals that ended up inside them. Despite the obvious similarities in design, Angelo was reasonably sure they hadn't had access to Guyver technology when they'd designed it, though it was hard to tell.

The Atlantians might have needed the rather fierce looking helmet to breath underwater, but as an Interfacer, Angelo knew that he could breath water for a while at least, so long as his lungs didn't notice what they were trying to sort through.

84 almost caught up with him as he touched down on the seabed. Ahead of them was what appeared to be a wide depression in the seabed, maybe a hundred metres wide. The pair of them were several metres away from the edge of the depression here, and neither Shades or X was in sight right now, at least to 84.

"I don't see them," 84 said. He was back in Shark Armour again, something that didn't exactly look good, but was practical at least.

"Not yet," Angelo replied, adjusting his voice to compensate for the different noise it would make underwater so that 84 heard him as if they were in air.

Looking around, he reached into a jacket pocket that materialised in the water for an instant, and pulled out an M9 Pistol. Aiming it roughly forward, he stopped as 84 spoke.

"Will that thing work underwater?"

Angelo paused. "It will if I want it to." He pulled the trigger, moved the gun a few centimetres to the right, fired again…

As he fired the second shot, the first shot hit something, invisible even to Reploid senses, that was sticking up like a wall, following the edge of the depression upward. Contrary to normal aquatic physics, the shot pinged off the surface as if it had been a solid wall. The dozen or so other shots that followed marked out the surface, each one bringing a couple of square metres of it into existence for a few seconds.

84 took a step back, then stepped forward again, an unbelieving stare spread across his expression.

"How big is it?"

Angelo shrugged and clicked his fingers. As he did the molecules of the water rearranged themselves so that in an instant he held in his hand a copy of the sunglasses that still rested on his nose. He tossed them over to 84, who caught them easily in the slow-motion action of the aquatic environment.

Raising his helmet's visor, 84 slipped the glasses on, sliding the arms under his helmet.

Angelo saw him blink, then look around sharply as he saw what was in front of him.

The depression in the seabed had been made by what looked, in the super-spatial light they were seeing by through the glasses, a several hundred metre wide jellyfish, that was apparently resting. Of course if you focussed a bit through it, to a point roughly halfway across the depression, you could make out a pair of Reploids, stuck underneath the main body. Outlined in a faint green glow that indicated that they were an intrusion into normal space/ time by something from elsewhere, a number of what would normally have been tendrils the thickness of hairs, hung near the pair, occasionally moving out to brush against them.

"I've never seen a Creature this big," 84 said slowly. "Until now anyway."

"True," Angelo said. "This thing seems to be trying to do something to your friends. I'm not sure what, but I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of one of those tendrils."

"How do we get to them?"

"I'd suggest going through this thing, but that's not a nice prospect."

"We can see its insides from here. Is going through them going to be any worse?"

Angelo glanced round to check his calculations. "I'd say that about ninety percent of this thing is some kind of turbo-powered digestive juices. Puncture it and there's enough there to reduce at least half the sea life on this planet to mush in a few days. Unless it evaporated, came down as rain, and got into land animals of course."

"Mush?"

"Those bullets you keep for that gun of yours?"

"Like that?"

Angelo nodded slowly. "Of course, we do have another option in this case."

Holding out a hand, spreading all of his fingers apart, then aiming them forward, he focussed on the Creature. As he did, he could feel space twist around him, swapping two parts of itself round…

The Creature heaved itself up, possibly in pain, as the pair of Reploids that had been beneath it were swapped for an equal volume of water from just in front of 84 and Angelo.

Each grabbing one of them, 84 and Angelo swam for the surface, feeling the Creature pursuing them at a surprising speed.

They broke the surface fast enough that all four of them landed a couple of metres from the edge of the water. Reforming his cloths back to their usual style, not to mention drying them out, Angelo turned and was slightly amazed by what he saw.

The Creature was rising up on a two hundred metre wide column of water and its underside was already at least ten metre above the main surface, though thousands of tendrils were still visible beneath the tide level.

84 moved forward to stand next to Angelo and pointed a disbelieving finger at the Creature, changing his armour back to its default form. "That," he yelled, "is Cheating!" He turned away, then turned back to look at the Creature and added, "With a capital 'CH'!"

"Is this where we all die," he said as he turned back to Angelo, having apparently vented his feelings of disbelief.

Before Angelo could reply there was the sound of a Hover-bike approaching and the pair of them turned to see Neo Paradox approaching at high speed. He managed to come to a stop just next to them, though the bike skidded slightly as he did, leaving a shower of sparks behind him.

"Wow, I'd hate to go swimming with that thing around," Neo said as he, unsteadily, got off the bike. He spotted Angelo looking carefully at it, and glared. "What, I can drive you know."

"Then why the dents?"

Neo looked very guilty, very quickly. There were a fair number of dents, scratches and scorch marks across the M.A.C. and what looked like a telephone cable was hanging off one fin.

"I never said I could drive it well. Could you fix it before we go back? Kyle's likely to take his feelings out on me if someone doesn't."

Angelo shook his head and looked back at the Creature, which was hovering unsteadily where it had been before. Probably one of the guards in this form would have been several miles upstream already, but this Creature was still uncertain about itself of course.

"I think we've got more immediate problems," he said.

"This is the part where we all die," 84 said.

"Not if I can help it," Angelo said, raising a hand. "Now this is something that I doubt most Timeforcers could manage, even if they knew it was possible."

Concentrating was simple. He now concentrated on the Portal that had been there a few minutes before, and thought hard about it being open again.

In one startling moment, the hill of water that the Creature was sitting on, began to swirl, then collapsed downwards, taking the Creature with it. In an instant it had become a whirlpool, with a very large Creature falling down the middle of it.

"Nice trick," yelled Neo over the roaring sound that had started up. "Reopening the Portal so that he can send that thing back to the Black Lands!" A fountain of water started up in the tank in front of them, blocking their view of the Creature as it went down. "Only problem is that the Portal is two way, so we might end up with something coming back!"

"So long as it's easier to kill than that thing," 84 replied, "I don't care!"

Angelo nodded to himself as he saw the Creature vanish through the Portal, like a spider down a drain, and closed the Portal.

As the fountain vanished, he saw that Neo had been right, and something had come back through.

84 dived to one side as another of the Walrus Creatures appeared off the top of the fountain and belly-flopped the concrete in front of them, nearly crushing Angelo. Its tusks went right into the paving, up to their base.

Shades and X were still unconscious and had various vine-like spikes sticking into their armour. They didn't even shudder as it pulled its tusks out and knocked a table, Frisbee-style, in their direction with enough force to behead a row of ferns that had been in the wrong place.

84 came up fast and brought his E-Buster round to point at the Walrus, firing off a medium shot at its face as he did. Apparently the Black Lands were learning and had picked up on the fact that this was a good form for survival, or ensuring the lack-of-survival of others.

The shot didn't seem to affect the Walrus at all, beyond flicking its head back a bit. With almost lightning speed though, it flicked its head back forward and stared at the three of them that were conscious.

Even through the sunglasses that Angelo had given him, 84 could feel the power of that stare going through him like a thermic lance. Seeing the glowing eyes as they really were didn't help much as they actually looked a lot more effective…

A fireball hit the Walrus in the face, breaking the spell.

84 shook himself, then reached back, grabbed Neo and pulled him away from Angelo. He'd only seen the Interfacer resort to such lowly tricks as fireballs once before, and that was when he'd been too annoyed to go for anything more subtle. These ones had been even bigger and more powerful.

As he pulled the Timeforcer behind the reception desk, 84 looked back at Angelo and saw a figure that wasn't a Human with a slightly larger ego than usual. This was an Interfacer, with the full power of time and space to back his anger up and a strange desire to vent it on an appropriate target.

As the Walrus turned its stare back towards him, Angelo did something he'd apparently done rarely since he'd been a teenager. With the same air of ceremony and power about him that a really good Samurai might have when putting on his best ceremonial armour and weapons for his ultimate battle, Angelo removed his glasses.

Beneath the glasses, eyes with iris so grey as to be nearly as black as his pupil, met the Walrus's stare straight on and kicked it back in the genitals.

There was a heavy silence, as you get when the entire world seems to be waiting for something loud and dramatic to happen. 84 could feel the battle of wills between the Interfacer and Creature, though in truth, the Walrus didn't stand a chance. There was a feeling to Angelo's power: it wasn't the last dredges of someone going at it as hard as they could. It was the feeling of someone who's barely pushing because that's all they needed to do.

The air was feeling so tense that if he'd jumped it would have supported him, when the Walrus seemed to give up, bowing its head down so that its tusks carved a long trough through the concrete.

Angelo continued to glare at it for a minute until he turned away, almost in disgust. "My mind is my own. I won't let anyone take it away from me."

Slowly, 84 slid himself out from cover. "Is it safe to come out yet?" He kept his E-Buster ready, just in case.

"Could be," Angelo said. He glared at the Walrus, which seemed to feel the force of his gaze and lowered its head again. "That thing's not going to try anything on us."

"What did you do?"

84 glanced at the Timeforcer and realised that Neo must have gotten so used to relying on his powers that he hadn't been able to tell what had been happening.

"It tried to hypnotise us, I clobbered it," Angelo said simply, looking down at X and Shades. "Right now though I think it might be an idea to get these pair back to Jack's house. I really don't like the look of those stings."

Nodding, 84 knelt next to the pair of them, and laid a hand on one of their shoulders. Activating his teleport system, he left.

Chapter 9 – Attempted revenge and a dunking or two

Neo tried to grab 84's shoulder before he vanished, but failed.

"Damn it," he muttered. "Couldn't he have taken me as well?"

Angelo glared at him. "I know that he can teleport an entire army sometimes, but that's when he's overriding their teleport controls. Just on his own, he can manage that pair, but not you as well."

Neo looked round, slightly annoyed. The M.A.C. was still lying there, just as badly scratched as before, still with the telephone cable hanging off it. "I suppose I've got to take that back now."

"Might be an idea," Angelo said. "At least then you'll only get done by Kyle for battering it rather than battering it and loosing it."

Neo glared at him. "Where did you go anyway? That other Interfacer turned up and you left and you've only just gotten round to getting back?" In the background the Walrus was settling itself, apparently wanting to sunbath for a while.

Angelo glared back at Neo. "I've been gone for several weeks thank you. Anyway, you know how it is with the Anargus…"

"No I don't," Neo said. "I've heard of them of course, but the general impression I got was that they were a myth that a load of species came up with and the Interfacers just decided to adopt as their own." A lot had been done in the name of the Anargus by various species, though much of it wasn't violent oddly. They'd always seemed to be more of a benevolent god rather than the usual tyrants.

Angelo looked at him carefully and with what little of his power he could still use, Neo felt Angelo speed reading his emotions.

"You really don't do you?" Angelo shook his head and settled himself on a seat next to a pool-side table that had managed to remain standing throughout all of the fights. He made a passing gesture and two glasses of what looked like orange juice appeared on the table, with interestingly shaped ice cubes taking up most of the available space in the glass.

Neo sat down and took a tentative sip of the one that Angelo didn't grab. Despite the colour it wasn't orange juice, though their was that familiar edge to it… "Tersian palm fruits?"

Angelo shrugged. "I grew up on Tersius, 2371 to 2395 by the standard Earth calendar. It's a taste of home."

Neo grimaced as he took a deeper sip. "It's always been a bit sour for my tastes."

Angelo raised an eyebrow behind his glasses. "I never said that I had good memories of it. Being the only person in a totally Aryan colony who has black hair and dark grey eyes does wonders for your world view. Particularly when no amount of nanotech surgery will change either of them for more than a few hours at a time."

Neo looked more carefully at Angelo. There had been an edge to the Interfacer's voice that he hadn't liked much.

"Anyhow," Angelo said, as if the last few minutes of conversation hadn't happened, "to explain the Anargus, you need to explain the basic structure of the Multiverse."

"Oh please, I picked up basic cosmology centuries ago."

Angelo smiled at him. "This isn't basic." He took a sip of his drink and seemed to consider. "Basically put, there is the universe, a singular linear plane of existence. Some of them have an extra set of dimensions stuck on them, some have extra pockets of existence like subspace or Hyperspace. The basic rule is that they all experience time and space in some manner."

"With you so far," Neo said, sitting back. Most of the Timeforcers he'd talked to hadn't known much about the Anargus. Even without Timeforcer senses, he knew he was onto something here.

"OK, then we go a step further. The Multiverse is, in the simplest possible sense, every single alternate universe, parasite universe, pocket universe, sub-dimension, etcetera, that could, might, will, should and does exist. At the centre of that is the Heart of the Storm, the never-ending chaos from which the multiverse sprang and into which it will eventually collapse if I don't have any say in the matter."

"Fine," Neo said. "I knew that much. I mean I've even gone so far as to chuck Capek into the Heart of the Storm, so I've seen it at closer range than most people."

Angelo nodded. "Now for the clever bit. By the definition I just gave, nothing could exist outside the Multiverse." He paused and seemed to be waiting for Neo to catch up with his line of thought.

Neo was thinking fast. "People have looked for the Anargus before. They searched everywhere and everywhen that they could… They didn't look outside…"

Angelo nodded. "The Anargus are a singular set of entities, existing once and once only, outside the Multiverse. They don't suffer from time or space in any way that you or I could understand. They took the first Interfacers and helped them to learn to use their powers."

Neo tilted his head and considered. "I still haven't found out how the first Timeforcers came to learn to use their powers. I don't even know where we came from."

Angelo snorted and drank some more of his drink so that the glass was half full.

Neo was staring at him when the glass came down again. "You known don't you? You know where my people came from… Who my parents are…"

"I know where to find out," Angelo corrected him. "I don't generally bother to memorise other species details very often."

"Where would you find out," Neo said. I've got to find out for myself.

Angelo shrugged. "It's not a secret or anything. It's this little place cal…"

Discontinuity

"…ure it's a secret all of a sudden," Angelo asked Warwick, refilling his own glass with a wave of his hand while Warwick sucked some of his own through a straw.

His friend nodded. Would I lie about something like this? Most of the Timeforcers don't know about it and apparently that's the way we've got to keep it. Warwick adjusted his monocle and glanced at the seat opposite Angelo. Where'd laughing boy go?

Angelo glanced around, noticing that Neo was indeed missing from his seat. His glass lay on its side, its contents slowly dribbling off the side of the table.

There was a slight whimpering sound and Angelo looked down to find Neo curled up in a foetal position around the table's single central leg, whimpering and moaning softly to himself.

Blinking a couple of times, Angelo realised that he'd never had to deal with quite this sort of situation before. He'd taken a job as a teacher for a year one time and had to deal with tantrums, fights and accusations, but never anyone who was scared senseless.

"Neo?" Angelo knelt down and almost whispered. "You awake?"

The only response was a slightly more frantic whimper and Neo curling up even more tightly.

Probably the shock, Warwick said. He's used to viewing that sort of thing through a super-spatial retina, not normal senses.

Angelo nodded absently. "Neo?"

Whimper.

"Matrix?"

Groan.

"You there?"

A single bloodshot eye became visible behind a hand.

Angelo sighed. He really didn't have time for this right now.

In one sudden movement he whipped off his sunglasses and hit Neo with the force of his will power.

"Stand up when I'm talking to you Neo Paradox you 'orrible little Timeforcer!"

The table rocked sharply as in a single movement Neo managed to propel himself into a standing position and flatten himself against the wall of the reception area. The old terror was gone and replaced by something new and more immediate. Before it had been like fear of the night when it was just going dark. Now it was the fear of an animal standing over you, ready to tear you to bits. This sort was easier to deal with.

Angelo reached out a hand to stabilise the table, on which Warwick, Warwick's drink and Angelo's drink had remained totally stable the whole time. Neo's drink had drained up into the glass which was now standing up again. All the time he kept his eyes locked with Neo's.

"Whatthewhatthewhatthe…" Neo paused in mid-stutter. "WhatTheHellJustHappened?!"

Angelo replaced his sunglasses and sat himself down. "That, was an Anargus."

Neo seemed to get his breathing under a bit more control. "An Anargus?"

"In the flesh, so to speak. Though I'm not sure they have anything you would call flesh."

Neo seemed to think about this. "And the weird thing where everything seemed to take forever and happen all at once?"

Angelo sighed. "As I told you, the Anargus don't exist in time or space, at least as Humans understand them. In fact they exist in non-linear time, meaning that they can't actually enter normal time without becoming something other than what they are. To compensate for this, they bring a few rules with them, so time still exists, just not quite in the way that Humans are used to, making it hard for them to remember specific details."

Neo seemed to calm down as what he'd seen was explained to him. "So how much time actually went by?"

Warwick blew a raspberry. Angelo merely sighed and rested his forehead on the palm of his hand.

"You do listen don't you?"

"What?!" Neo's expression showed that he clearly didn't find anything unusual about his question.

Angelo shook his head. "Literally speaking then. The visit of the Anargus took less than a second, more than a million years and no length of time in-between."

Neo opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then grabbed his drink and swallowed half of it.

"You Interfacers are all as cryptic as each other," he muttered as he wiped his lip with his sleeve.

"Hey," Angelo said. "You asked, not me."

Neo glared at him. "You know what I mean. Anyway," he seemed to remember something, "where was that place you were telling me about?"

Angelo shrugged. "Apparently the Anargus don't want Timeforcers to know where it is or what it's called."

"Why?"

"Something to do with none of you knowing your origins and them wanting to keep you that way. If you want we could call the Anargus back so that you can talk again," he added helpfully.

Neo opened his mouth to make a quick response, but was cut off by a glowing ball that exploded out of the floor several metres behind them, then exploded into thousands of bolts of lightning in mid-air. Instead of earthing themselves like decent lightning bolts should do, these formed a pattern in the air, outlining the shape of a humanoid, maybe thirty metres tall.

The lightning began to run across the surface of the shape it outlined, till in a second it flashed and a large Human-shape stood there. It looked like an image created by someone that had heard about Humans, but never actually seen one. The main point was that it was thirty metres tall, though slightly stooped. It had two arms, though these were elongated so that they were twice as long as they should have been. The legs were shorter, giving the impression of a gorilla, though very few gorillas had pale orange skin, jet black hair slicked back like a respectable vampire, glowing dark blue eyes and small bolts of red lightning running over their skin.

Its choice of cloths was odd as well, with something like a Jedi's robe but in bright green and yellow patterns rather than brown. Beneath the robe it wore something like a Mandalorian armour, through without the usual oxidation stains and the like.

A tongue like a snake's flickered out between teeth that could have belonged to a really tidy vampire.

Angelo didn't even blink behind his sunglasses. The whole thing had taken less than two seconds.

"Not another Timeforcer," he muttered, without looking round.

Turning with a sense of self-control that would have impressed anyone, Angelo looked round at the Timeforcer who was standing swaying slightly as if unused to this strength of gravity. Its expression, if that was what it could be called, remained totally still, regardless of what the Timeforcer did, probably showing that it wasn't used to using Human expressions rather than that it didn't have any emotions.

"What do you want?" Angelo slipped out of his seat as he spoke, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets so that he appeared to be in a casual situation.

"Interfacer." Like its face, the Timeforcer's voice was devoid of emotion, revealing again that it hadn't started out its existence in a Humanoid form. "This Chiee'tas is my target, not you. Stand aside and I will dispatch him then leave you in peace."

Angelo glanced at Neo, who didn't seem to recognise the figure that was towering over them. "Given what you called him I don't need to ask why you want to kill him, so I'll spare you the trouble of explaining. But I'm afraid that I can't allow you to kill him, yet at any rate."

"Not yet? When then?"

Angelo raised a hand to his chin and made a show of considering the question. "When he's got his powers back. Then I won't need to step in to defend him. Until then though, I'm going to have to ask you to desist."

The Timeforcer paused and stared at them. Most likely he was trying to work out what to do next. Given the number of base forms that Timeforcers had, it was likely that this one wasn't used to communicating in this manner and was having to translate everything.

"I'm sorry you think that way," it continued eventually. "Unfortunately though, I need to kill him now and I'm not willing to wait until he's got his powers back. He's upset a lot of us and if I can kill him, it'll do my reputation no end of good. Do you seriously value the life of this Timeforcer above your own? And above that of your pets?"

Angelo put out a hand and got it across Warwick's chest before the monkey could try anything. "I don't. Quite frankly I think we'd be in a better position now if we'd stopped Capek rather than relying on him to do it for us. As it is it sounds like he's stirred up most of your species against him, so I'll have to stand in the way until he's able to defend himself. I value my life a lot, and I value yours a lot less."

The Timeforcer's eyes suddenly brightened and blue fire began to burn across its eyebrows. "Very well then," it said, its voice and face still expressionless. "I will kill you and your pets, then the Chiee'tas." An overlarge hand was clumsily raised and pointed in the direction of the sunbathing Walrus.

What?! It thinks that the Creature is a pet of mine!

There wasn't any kind of visual effect, nothing that a Human could perceive to show that something was happening.

To Angelo, with the sensory range of an Interfacer, the energies that shot into the Walrus were obvious, nearly blinding in their intensity. Nearly blinding of course, because there is no real way to blind a super-spatial retina. But it was bright. The only real way to describe it was like a fireworks show, but with all the sparks, flashes and noise directed along a thin beam in the direction of the target Creature.

After a few seconds of the onslaught, random leakage and near misses began to melt the concrete for several metres around the Walrus.

Despite all this, it didn't seem to actually notice and merely rolled over onto its side.

The Timeforcer paused in its attack, apparently unsure of what had happened. Glancing at Angelo in a 'that-was-just-to-warm-up' way, it raised its other hand and resumed the attack.

Angelo watched with interest as the water in the pool began to boil and the metal railings began to run like treacle, with the Walrus at the centre of the bombardment still apparently ignorant of what was being turned against it.

It's because it comes from the Black Lands, Angelo realised. It's an Idea personified, meaning that attacks like that can't work against it, no matter how hard you try.

Apparently disturbed by the sudden hiss when some of the melted railings touched the water, the Walrus shifted its weight, then looked up when part of its body sank into the melting concrete. It seemed to notice the Timeforcer for the first time, and probably perceived what was being turned against it.

Angelo, who had been doing the equivalent of sunbathing in the radiance of the other-dimensional attack, shivered when the energy suddenly seemed to be drained out of the area.

For an instant for guessed that the Timeforcer must have been drawing on more power, as if that would have helped it. Then he saw what was happening, when the Walrus let rip with more power than it had used before.

Steeling himself against the mind-bending power, he glanced round to check on the other pair. Warwick was squeezing the bridge of his nose and had his eyes shut as if suffering from a headache, while Neo was simply standing there, his mind flat with the will-power that was being forced through it. Angelo decided against doing anything to help him for now. If all else failed he could sort his mind out later, but for now his own defences were giving him trouble.

Turning back to the combat scene, he saw that the Walrus had advanced a few waddles towards the Timeforcer who was swaying alarmingly, though appeared to be getting his mental defences under control. As the Walrus moved slightly closer, it seemed to take all the Timeforcer's strength to raised an arm and knock the Creature aside.

The Walrus landed in the water heavily, creating a massive tidal wave that came up over the other side of the pool and went straight into the doors that led to the rest of the sea-life centre. It seemed to flounder for a minute, then vanished beneath the surface.

Angelo stood patiently, waiting for the Timeforcer to recover. It was an incredibly bad practise most of the time, but then again maybe not this once.

"You want to try against us now?"

The Timeforcer was still dazed, but seemed to recover enough to turn towards them. "I will fight you. The Human, the Monkey and the Cheei'tas."

"And one more," Angelo said. As if to emphasise this point there was a blur and the Timeforcer suddenly raised a hand to its eye, not fast as such, but with a speed that would have caught most Humans unawares.

Angelo raised an arm and in another blur, a bird appeared above it. Like the best trained of falcons, Kwaith settled himself on Angelo's sleeve and stood for a second before locking his claws in place and slowly, in the way of his species, sliding round until he was hanging upside down.

The Timeforcer removed the hand from its eye and looked down at them. Despite the rumoured invulnerability of Timeforcers, its eye was bleeding where Kwaith had jabbed his beak into it. Glowing silver blood was trickling out of the centre of its pupil, running down its face. Given that it wasn't used to this type of body and was only wearing it to, in a way, blend in, it probably hadn't bothered to build any pain sense into it.

"A Darrow Raven," the Timeforcer whispered, though due to his size the whisper echoed off nearby buildings. "Another interesting pet."

Warwick seemed to get sick of it at this point. He leapt down off the table and scuttled over to the Timeforcer's boots, which looked more like Wellingtons than boots.

The monkey looked up at the Timeforcer with a 'the-bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall' expression, and karate kicked it from several metres away so that his foot didn't actually touch it.

The force of the kick carried the Timeforcer almost a hundred metres out to sea, where it landed with a very large splash that would have sent a small tidal wave across the sea-life centre had Angelo not brought a force field into existence to stop it.

At that moment, Neo chose to groan and slumped a bit from where he'd been standing almost to attention, entranced by the Walrus.

"You okay," Angelo asked, turning his attention away from Warwick and the Timeforcer.

Neo nodded. "I hate people mucking with my mind," he muttered.

Angelo shrugged. He normally felt the same way, but generally whenever someone tried something, he did something about them before they tried it again. "It could have been worse."

"Yeah, right." Neo seemed to be exhausted all of a sudden.

"Its true," Angelo said. "If we hadn't been here then your friend out there," he indicated the sea with his thumb, where the head of the Timeforcer was just becoming visible, "would have done you in by now."

The pair of them looked round as there was the boom of an explosion and bits of rubble pinged and whined off the energy shield Angelo brought into existence. From the centre of the explosion they heard someone shouting something about his top hat having been singed, then the Timeforcer was again knocked out to sea by a massive concussion.

As Angelo turned round, Kwaith hopped off him and landed on the table. Angelo watched as there was a sudden fountain of water out to sea and the Timeforcer leapt inland, landing almost on top of Warwick.

The monkey dived out of the way, then punched upward at the same time that the Timeforcer punched downward. The force of the punches met midway and exploded, sending Warwick tumbling into a sub-dimension as a means of escape while it whipped the Timeforcer's feet out from beneath him, sending him sprawling across the pool and concrete.

Angelo wandered over to the Timeforcer's ear just as it started to get up and kicked it a couple of times. "Oi, get up."

The Timeforcer didn't even bother to look round. It simply swung an overlarge arm in his direction and tried to swat him aside at several times the speed of sound.

With casual ease Angelo ducked even faster, then straightened up as the arm passed him. When the arm came back, low enough that he wouldn't have been able to duck it, he jumped lightly into the air and cleared the giant's arm. For good measure he karate kicked it in the head as he landed.

The impact would have put a hole in reinforced ten metre thick stainless steel and concrete. The Timeforcer blinked at the crack that echoed round the remains of the sea-life centre, then raised a hand to the side of its head where glowing blood was dribbling down its ear. It stood up and looked down on Angelo, its expression totally neutral.

"Impressive. Apparently I did not construct this body very well."

"On the contrary," Angelo said, "your body is as invulnerable as any Timeforcer's. And as with any Timeforcer, you do have a slight weakness in that invulnerability."

"Impossible," the Timeforcer declared. Behind him Angelo could sense Neo nodding in agreement.

"Your invulnerability comes from your sub-conscious instincts tapping into your time-sense to work out when someone is going to harm you, then causing the parts of you that are going to be affected to be temporarily strengthened. All I need to do is move slightly out of phase with your time-sense, and you can't tell when I'm going to hit you." Angelo finished his lecture by tugging at the lapels of his jacket in a satisfied manner and smiling up at the Timeforcer.

"Of course it's a lot harder than the description makes it sound. Not everyone is able to do it. But having taken on a couple of rogue Interfacers who used the same trick, I learnt to use it quickly."

The Timeforcer seemed to consider. "If that is true, then I have only to extend my time-sense in order to become more invulnerable."

Angelo's face screwed up, making a show of regretting what he'd said. "I think I'm going to be sorry for telling you that." Come on you cretin, take the bait!

The glow in the Timeforcer's eyes increased suddenly, the lightning running across its skin changed from red to yellow and began to crackle audibly.

Around him Angelo could sense the Timeforcer's time-sense begin to stretch out to its limit, trying to predict every move that he might make. Making it easier, Angelo tried to remain still, though this would probably create just as many possibilities across its time-sense.

The Timeforcer began to sway for a few seconds, then looked down at Angelo again. "Little man. Now you will die."

Angelo grinned up at it. "I beg to differ." Wrapping time around himself as a normal soldier might make use of a car to speed him on his way to an attack, Angelo took a running jump at the Timeforcer and karate kicked it in the navel.

Or one part of him did. In an attack that he'd only managed to get right once or twice before, Angelo felt his senses being torn in a dozen different directions as almost a hundred semi-transparent images of him broke off, overlaid and blended and able to punch, kick or attack by some other means with as much force as Angelo normally could on his own.

The Timeforcer was screaming as his time-sense was overloaded by the influx of predictions as it tried to compensate for each and every one of the different images. Most of the images didn't actually touch it, and merely kicked or punched from several metres away, though calling on the same powers that Warwick had employed to carry and amplify the force of the blow so that each attack struck like a nuclear bomb powered by the total fusion of a star.

As some of the images moved round behind the Timeforcer it didn't get a chance to fly out to sea and was instead crushed by the blows. The snap and crack of bones was muffled by the screams, which had intensified as the attacks came.

Angelo took as step back and watched through several hundred sets of eyes as the images drifted quickly back to him and joined him again. Once they'd all returned, he stood there and looked carefully at the Timeforcer, which had collapsed on the floor and seemed to be trying to rearrange its bones by simply wriggling around a bit.

"What did you do," Neo called out from what he probably hoped was a safe distance.

Angelo looked round, then wandered over to join him. "Simple. It tried to extend its time-sense so that it could catch me out when I tried to change phase. That means that it would have had a lot of information going through its mind, explaining why it was swaying to start with.

"I then hit it several thousand times, with each attack in a different phase. It tried to understand all of the information and couldn't cope, so dropped its defences so that I actually did several times as much damage as I would normally have done."

Neo suddenly looked over Angelo's shoulder in the direction of the Timeforcer.

Turning at a slightly more sedate pace, Angelo saw that the Timeforcer was still standing, though had apparently decided against repairing its body and had simply opted for telekinesis to hold it up.

"An interesting trick, though it wouldn't catch me again," it said. Raising an arm that was bending in at least a dozen places that it shouldn't have been, the Timeforcer attacked.

Neo ducked hurried as the Timeforcer launched a massive fireball at the pair of them. He was aware that had he launched that fireball at someone he thought deserved it, it could easily have wiped the city off the map.

As he ducked, he was aware that Angelo was still standing there, apparently unconcerned by what was about to befall the pair of them.

Neo closed his eyes, just in time to feel something warm pass by above his back. When, after a couple of seconds, he was still aware of what was going on so glanced up and looked around.

The Timeforcer was standing several metres further away than it had been, with a large hole burnt in the armour that it wore on its chest.

As he watched, another attack was launched, this time with two fireballs. Both were aimed straight at Angelo's chest and by rights should have hit him.

Strangely though, neither seemed to want to and instead bent themselves into odd angles, flew around Angelo and Neo, then caught the Timeforcer across the chest. Apparently its defences had been weakened to such a degree that it wasn't able to withstand even that small an attack, and its chest armour cracked all across its surface.

The Timeforcer staggered backwards a couple of paces and aimed another volley, this time of lightning bolts, at them.

In a blur, Angelo's hand went up and he caught the lightning on his palm, jolting slightly as it hit, then steadying himself and standing, leaning slightly into the assault as if to prevent himself from falling over backwards.

Even when the Timeforcer altered its aim so that both of its arms were pointing in different directions, the lightning still went out of its way to reach Angelo's palm.

After almost a minute of crackling discharges which ended up with Neo's hair standing on end, the Timeforcer seemed to give up. The lightning bolts ceased to come, but instead a whip appeared in the Timeforcer's hand. Given the unusual scale it had given itself, the whip was almost fifty metres long, though seemed to be very thin.

The whip lashed out at them so fast that Neo almost didn't see it move.

Angelo it seemed, did see it coming.

As it came round he ducked his head and raised an arm, somehow contriving to scythe Neo's legs out from under him in the process so that he collapsed to the floor. An arm shot up and there was an audible snap as the whip hit his sleeve.

Neo looked up from the floor as the whip wrapped itself round Angelo's arm. As it reached his wrist, Angelo pulled his arm down sharply, causing most of it to land at his feet, including the handle which he'd somehow managed to pull from the Timeforcer's grip.

Scrambling to his feet, Neo looked at the whip. Angelo's hand was a strange shade of red/ purple from where it was cutting off his circulation. There was a faint blue glow around the whip, which shimmered in the same way that Jack's Time Shear Blades did. It was even the same colour as them.

"Interesting design," Angelo commented as he began to remove the whip from his arm. "Soul-cutter sharp edge, meaning that the glow is everything from atoms down to quarks being cut into pieces by the edge effect."

"Why hasn't it gone through the floor then?" This point occurred to Neo at the same instant that he realised that one coil of the whip was lying on his foot.

"Because Soul-cutter edges," Angelo said, grasping hold of the handle of the whip, "don't have to obey all the rules." As he finished speaking, he brought the handle up and flicked out the whip in the direction of the Timeforcer, which had apparently temporarily lost control of its telekinetic abilities when Angelo stole its whip.

The whip caught the Timeforcer across the right side of its waist, then cut through its torso and up through its left shoulder. Despite his size Angelo seemed to have heaved the whole fifty metres into the air. Its face showed the first expression that Neo had seen it show so far: terror. Its scream cut through the air, shattering glasses and windows, nearly blowing Neo's mind…

As the scream died away and the body collapsed, the whip faded from sight. As it came to rest, the Timeforcer's body began to break down, loosing it's material form and entering it's energy state for an instant before the energy fields collapsed, some of it scattering itself to the ether, some of it collapsing together to form multi-dimensional crystals, some of which blew away in the wind and the larger of which lay there, glowing softly.

"'And in the final seconds of hd life, the knowledge was found that no one should be underestimated, especially when they act with such self-assurance. This knowledge passed through hd mind as the whip that had been forged from hd own power sliced through hd material torso, removing hd soul from its home and ending hd existence, for such a thing could not be called a life.' May the Almighty forgive your sins, and reincarnate you somewhere pleasant where you may learn the folly of your past life." There came the thump of a heavy book shutting.

Neo realised that he wasn't sure who'd spoken and that despite him and Angelo being the only ones here, the voice had come from behind him. He wasn't even sure that someone had spoken, because at least parts of the voice seemed to reach his minds without going through his ears.

Turning slowly to his right, Neo settled his gaze on a figure that was standing several metres away from him. It wore simple brown robes and a medallion on a long chain, which Neo vaguely recognised as belonging to a reverend of the Ninth Day Wanderers. These features he was happy with. They were easily recognisable from his past life. The rest of the figure wasn't.

Something like a boar's head, though covered with red/ brown hair most of which was at least ten centimetres long, was settled atop the robes. The mouth had more teeth than he would have liked to see, while what was probably a third eye was set above and between the other pair, though it was hard to tell because a patch covered that one and the right eye. A scar ran across both covered eyes. Four ears stuck up like an Alsatian's, hairy on the outside but bald inside, and seemed to constantly swivel back and forth independently of each other.

In it's arms the figure held a large book, leather bound and with what looked like a platinum pattern across it's surface. Only the hands were visible of the arms and Neo almost wished he hadn't seen them. Each hand had four fingers, with a thumb on either side of the fingers, giving two on each hand. Each digit was hairy on it's upper surface and leathery on it's underside. Each one also had a two inch claw sticking out, which looked like it could be extended a lot further.

The creature didn't seem to have noticed him and was staring off into the distance. Neo began to back away slowly…

"Reverend, how long have you been standing there?"

Angelo's voice seemed to bring the creature back into the real world. "I have been here for several minutes Angelo. As you know, those who read history cannot partake of it." The voice was mainly an unintelligent growl, with something in the background to suggest that words were being formed. The words though seemed to reach his brain without actually being heard via the ears. When it arrived though, it seemed to be the voice of one who was friendly and would probably continue to be friendly even after a dozen attempts at murder.

Neo looked round at Angelo, slightly startled. He knew that Interfacers came in many shapes and forms, but he also knew that most of them altered their appearance to blend in when they visited worlds that their species didn't exist on. Warwick of course didn't need to and the Interfacer at the gym was safe because the Human mind simply denied that such a thing existed and so wouldn't let the mind see it. But this one…

"Will you not introduce me to your friend?" The creature gestured towards Neo, who noticed that the book it had been holding had disappeared without him realising.

Angelo placed a hand on Neo's shoulder and hauled him upright. "Neo Paradox, meet the Reverend. Reverend, meet Neo Paradox, Timeforcer."

The Reverend made the Ninth Day Wanderer's, gesture of greeting and Neo half-consciously responded in same. "It is a pleasure to meet you Neo Paradox. I have read of your life many times before and had hoped to meet you."

Neo noticed that a book had appeared in the Reverend's hands again. It was odd though. It didn't fade into existence, or appear, or get pulled out of an inner pocket. It had simply not been there one minute, then the next minute he'd been holding it. The nearest comparison Neo could think of was that he'd simply looked away and not seen it brought out, but had been looking at the figure the whole time.

The Reverend held up the book, which was not only big, but thick as well, for him to see. Neo didn't understand for a minute, then recognised his own crest and name on the front. The double ended, blue and red Lightsabre gave the game away a bit.

"That book…"

"Your life," the Reverend said. "From beginning to end, the completed work."

"I haven't finished living my life yet. How can someone have written it up already?"

"Somewhere, in the infinite totality of the multiverse, you now lie dead, in the same way that somewhere in that same totality you are just being conceived. To say that one of these has not yet happened, is to say that neither has happened, in which case you do not exist."

Neo opened his mouth to object to this, then couldn't find a fault with the logic. "Would that book…"

"Tell you where your species came from? No." The Reverend opened the book at the first page. "Tell you who your parents are? Yes, though not where to find them now."

Neo tried to edge closer so that he could see into the book, but hadn't gone a single step before the book was slammed shut and the Reverend wasn't holding it again.

"I should probably warn you," Angelo said, "that an Anargus visited a few minutes ago to tell us that the Timeforcers aren't supposed to know about the…" He trailed off and glared at Neo. He looked up at the Reverend, tapped his watch and made a speed up motion with his hand. The Reverend half bowed and the pair of them became a high-speed blur as they folded time around themselves, speeding up their conversation so that he couldn't understand it. Obviously a lot had been said by the Anargus that Angelo didn't want Neo to hear.

After a few seconds of high-pitched conversation both of the Interfacers slowed down to a respectable speed, the sound of their voices Doppler-shifting as they did.

"Could I just ask," Neo said when the other pair had stopped talking for a few seconds, "what does 'cheei'tas' mean?"

They exchanged a glance then Angelo shrugged. "Roughly translated it means 'Breaker of the balance of terror'. If you wanted it translated into context, then it would go something along the lines of, when you killed Capek you established yourself as a force for 'good' in the Multiverse. Given that at least half of all Timeforcers spend their free time subjugating worlds and civilisations under their power, they now think of you as a direct threat to their existence."

Neo considered, then groaned. "I never thought my life would be like this. Can the Interfacers help me?"

Angelo shook his head. "We're already having trouble keeping up with the trail of destruction that various Timeforcers leave across the universe when they fight without having to guard you as well. Though I will admit that I personally might get sick of having to help you soon. This is the second time I've saved your life now."

"The second?" Neo was baffled. When had an Interfacer saved his life before?

"I was there buddy, when you were fighting Capek. Quite a lot of Interfacers were. The holes, dents and tears that you, your friends and all Capek's forces were putting in reality during that fight might well have destroyed the Multiverse if several thousand Interfacers hadn't been on hand to patch it up again. And Capek might well have dragged you into the Heart of the Storm if I hadn't distracted him at the last second so that his grip slipped."

Neo tried to get his mind round this, and failed.

"But right now," Angelo said, "I think we'd better be getting you and that M.A.C. back to Jack's place so that you can own up to Kyle about damaging his ride."

Chapter 10 – Boxing Clever

Kyle had managed to fall into a fitful sleep, punctuated by bursts of laughter from Zero, who was making up for not being allowed to go out and play with the Creatures by watching junk TV.

He'd just managed to fall asleep again when there was a bright orange flash that seared across his retina, even through his closed eyelids. Opening his eyes, he looked round and saw Jack deactivating his armour, with X and Shades on the floor next to him, with what looked like semi-transparent vines sticking out of them in various places.

"Need some help here," Jack called out.

Kyle flipped himself off the sofa and got down beside Shades. His brother's face was pale, the eyes closed. When Kyle pulled one eyelid up, the eye beneath it was unfocused and glassy.

"What happened to them?"

Jack shrugged as he pulled some equipment off the shelf above Trigger, who was still asleep. "We came across several creatures. One of them looked like some kind of giant Jellyfish. Goodness knows how long this pair were trapped underneath it. Those things are stings by the way."

Kyle looked down at the vine things again. "How do we get those out?"

Jack hooked up a display to Shades' dataport. "Firstly we find out what they're doing to them. If they're doing anything vital, we might not be able to simply remove them. We might actually need to do something clever to get them out rather than simply pulling."

What came up on the display didn't mean much to Kyle. All he could see was about a dozen different coloured lines running from one side of the screen to the other, with the occasional blip moving across. When Jack pressed part of the screen though, the image resolved itself into a schematic of Shades' armour, or most of it.

Bits of the picture seemed to be flickering out of sight or going red. Kyle glanced down and realised that the parts that were changing were those that had the stings in them.

"Dare I ask what those things are doing to them?" Kyle had a few nasty ideas, and didn't want to be proven correct.

"You could," Jack said. "Near as I can tell from these readings, parts of them are starting to simply loose contact with the rest of themselves. I'll have to run a few more checks, but these guys will probably simply fade into the Black Lands in a few hours. Either that or they'll become Creatures themselves."

"Way worse. What can we do?"

Jack activated his armour and slid a connector out so that it joined with X's dataport. The glow of a teleporter surrounded the pair of them and the stings slowly faded from sight. As they did, the wounds that they had caused also healed up.

The entire process took only a few seconds, but Jack was sweating and shaking when he deactivated the teleporter and shut down his armour. "That was harder than I'd expected."

"Can you help Kieran?" Kyle glanced across at where his brother was still in armour, lying there.

Jack took a deep breath, then sat down heavily against the sofa. "Give me a few minutes to calm my heart down."

"Does Kieran have that long?" Kyle looked at Jack, waiting for an answer, then, receiving none, stood and started to walk away.

As he did the door behind him, which led down to the garage and basement, opened. Neo certainly couldn't have brought the M.A.C. back so quietly, therefore someone must obviously have broken in, despite Jack's attempts at a security system.

All this flashed through Kyle's mind in the same instant that he drew the Equaliser mk1 from his belt and spun sharply, sighting along the barrel as it came up to eye level. It had tracked round to the door before it had even fully opened and anyone who was in the way was going to be sorry about it.

Kyle had a brief glimpse of a red furred figure in some kind of red/ brown robe, before the figure blurred and had crossed the couple of metres to where Kyle was standing. Two fingers slid quickly round his wrist to meet up with two thumbs (two thumbs on the same hand?) in a grip that didn't quite cut off circulation, but gave the distinct impression that it could sever his hand from his arm should he make the wrong move.

The Equaliser dropped from his hand as it jerked open by reflex. In the same instant the figure blurred again and appeared, standing next to the doorway, a partially dismantled Equaliser in it's hands. It's single eye that wasn't covered by a patch seemed to consider the weapon. At the same time Neo and Angelo came in through the door.

"Most intriguing," the figure said. "An Equaliser mark 1. Two thousand, five hundred and twenty kilometres per hour exit velocity, fitted with Boomer killing ammunition, capable of firing approximately five rounds a second with twenty rounds stored in the handle." The eye flicked up to look at Kyle. "I may not be fast, but I can certainly outrun a simple bullet like this." Claws slid out of the finger and thumb on one hand and were pushed through the titanium barrel almost as if it wasn't there, leaving a matching triangular hole on each side of it.

The person handed the gun back to Kyle, who looked at the barrel in amazement. There didn't seem to be any shards within the barrel so it would probably work just as well now as it did before. It would of course be a bad idea to fire it without cleaning it out first.

"Er, hi Kyle," Neo said. His tone of voice caused Kyle to suddenly forget the punctured weapon in his hand and look closely at his friend.

"What did you do to my M.A.C.?"

Angelo smiled and muttered something that Kyle didn't catch.

Neo gulped. "It's kind of, a bit, maybe a lot… Dented."

Kyle glared at Neo. For his friend to be this nervous… "How dented?"

"Nothing a complete overhaul wouldn't fix, I assure you," the robed figure said, showing a few more teeth in what was probably a smile. "But then again doing that will probably be excellent for meditation on how to repay the telephone company for the wire that he removed."

Kyle blinked, then looked sharply at Neo, who had covered his eyes with a hand and seemed to be muttering a prayer under his breath.

Angelo grinned and stepped into the conversation before Kyle could do any damage to Neo. "While we're still all alive, I should probably introduce the Reverend." He indicated the robed figure, who bowed at them, still showing his teeth. "He's a follower of many religions, knows many of their customs and practises, and has the equivalent of a cloak of invisibility."

The Reverend turned an almost pitiful expression on Angelo. "The knowledge of how to hide in plain sight can be attained by anyone should they merely observe their own actions as they walk down a street." He promptly reached under his robe and pulled out a broom which, like Warwick's hat, couldn't possibly have fitted into such a small place. "I simply take people's observations, or lack of them, and give them a nudge or two."

Kyle considered this for a minute, then a groan from Kieran attracted his attention. Looking down, he saw Jack kneeling next to his brother, wiring up the diagnostic equipment again. "What's up?"

"He's getting worse," Jack said, reactivating his armour.

Before he could do anything though, the Reverend had reached over his shoulder and held a hand over Kieran's forehead as if he was taking his temperature. "No. His life force is still strong. It is not his time to die." One hairy hand was placed on Kieran's armoured chest and a pale glow started up beneath it. A similar glow began to leak out past the stings, through the holes that they had made. Somehow this seemed to force the stings out, closing up the wounds as it did.

When the Reverend removed his hand from Kieran's chest, his armour deactivated and he lay there, still but obviously alive.

"We'd probably better get them onto a sofa," Jack said, giving the impression that he'd seen more impressive things before.

With most of them on their feet and well the next day, though sore in a few cases, it was decided that they should visit the gym again, on the basis that this would give them a chance to either keep in shape or get fit in the first place.

Having the Reverend with them had an odd side effect. They had all calmly trooped through the door to the garage and had found themselves appearing in the gym.

"It is a matter of perspective," he explained. "To the right sort of mind, all doors can appear to be merely reflections of other doors. With the right timing, you can walk through one door and step through what seems to be another, different doorway, but which is merely the same one at a different speed."

Neo frowned at this logic, then gave up. You would need to be a philosopher or religious fanatic to understand that sort of statement.

They'd settled down, much as they had before, though this time Warwick and Kieran were actually working out rather than playing the drums.

Neo had managed to exhaust himself within a few minutes, so had settled down on a bench next to the Reverend, who had been practising his sweeping, run round the hall several times in about five seconds, and declared that he was going to have a rest.

"So tired already?" The Reverend showed a few more teeth as he spoke to Neo, hopefully smiling.

Neo cast a sideways glance at him. "I've never had to work out like this before. At least not for about five thousand years," he admitted.

The Reverend shook his head slowly. "In the millennia and a half since the Interfacers revealed my power to me, I have never let my physical body fall into such a state."

Neo sighed. "Would that it were that simple. Being an Interfacer, you have a physical body first, then an immaterial one second. With Timeforcers it's the other way round. The Energy form is the one you exercise, consciously or otherwise, while you treat the physical body like a car; you keep it running, patch it up occasionally, keep it fuelled, but don't really treat it with the proper respect. The trouble I had regenerating this form when I lost my powers took most of the power I had left."

The Reverend nodded in agreement. "Such is the way of things. If I had been robed of my powers though, I would still have been able to defend myself. A Neviest Wild-Beast which was only half a year old could easily take on and kill a human of twenty, even if the human had a gun and a fifty metre head start. I myself, with the body of a twelve year old that I currently maintain, could take on any of your Reploid friends, even if they were in armour."

Neo considered. "Neviest Wild-Beasts… Name doesn't ring a bell."

"It may well not. I was the only member of my species to develop Interfacer powers. No Timeforcer was ever born in the form of a Neviest. None of us ever developed enough of an IQ to pass an IQ test. If you had tried putting one of them into such a test, they would have eaten the examiner. Even if you paid enough attention to track us down with such a reputation, we did not originate in this galaxy. I prefer to visit this galaxy rather than my own because that one lacks the intellectualism of this one."

Neo shrugged. "I wish I knew that much about where I came from." There was a silence from the other end of the bench and he glanced across to see that the Reverend had removed the patch from his right eye and was scratching at the leathery skin above it. When he ceased scratching, all three eyes were turned on Neo.

"Your eyes are perfectly fine," he realised. "Why have you got a patch over two of them?"

The Reverend shrugged, causing the chain his medallion hung on to jingle softly. "When people see that two of your eyes have a scar running through them, they start to wonder where a humble sweeper or priest might have been able to get the money or resources to heal them or replace them. Covering them serves the dual purpose of acting as a disguise and giving me a surface to use as a super-spatial retina when in a material form."

"Why do you need a surface?" Neo knew for a fact that most Interfacers were able to see beyond their normal visual range simply by concentrating through their powers. He himself knew how to alter a surface like a mirror or a pair of glasses so that you could use them like a kind of TV, seeing things that were beyond your normal range. But he'd only ever really used that when he needed to show someone else something, rather than as a general practise.

"It is again a matter of your base form. Timeforcers have an energy base, therefore find it easier to alter themselves so that they can see differently or take a new form. Interfacers have a material form and so for a few millennia might find the idea of altering their body in such a way… Disturbing. Some rely on instincts for such sensory input. Others learn how to alter a surface. Angelo's glasses for instance are such a contrivance. They of course serve the purpose of also hiding the colour of his eyes, a subject that he is touchy about."

Neo and the Reverend remained silent for a few minutes, then Neo turned a calculating expression on the Reverend. "That book…"

"You cannot read of it."

"How far through it am I right now?"

There was a pause, then Neo's book was open at some kind of dedication and quotations page, in the Reverend's hands. He recognised a few of the phrases as those he'd heard or said himself. Apparently whoever wrote this book also gave a list of your phrases that people might like to quote you on.

There was a sigh. "The number of pages bears no resemblance to the actual amount of life you have remaining. Little new experience takes little description and so you might live nearly to eternity, then die of boredom. A lot of experience, which is merely a repeat of something you have already done, will also take less room to describe and so give you a longer life. Many varied and new experiences will take much room to describe and a hundred pages may be needed to describe a few minutes."

Neo looked carefully at how many pages there seemed to be. He wasn't sure how thick the pages were and had no real reference for how big the writing was. Also he had no real idea of how someone might lay out his life in such a text so had no idea how far through he might already be.

He blinked, and suddenly realised that the book had vanished from in front of him. "How come you're allowed to read those books?"

"There are those of us, only a few mind you, who are allowed to act as librarians. We of course have to observe certain protocols and rules. We cannot for instance read about an event we don't like, then go and change it. Once the books are written they will not change or be changed. None of the books will allow you to read something that you might bend the rules in order to affect. There are other, more complicated rules, but the most basic is that we are not allowed to change events."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"I have read of your life. This part of it was closed to me, therefore I surmise that I was in some way involved and therefore must simply follow what I believe are the appropriate motions."

Neo shook his head and stood up. Sometimes, the universe could be so unfair.

Zero heaved himself up and glanced to his left, where Adam was trying to beat him at sit-ups. The kid was fast, Zero had to admit. On the far side of him, Kyle grunted slightly as he pulled himself up as well.

"A hundred," he muttered to himself, before flipping over and starting out on press-ups. Beside him Adam gave up on sit-ups and started out on press-ups, easily keeping pace with Zero. Zero saw Kyle glare at the pair of them out of the corner of his eye, then, puffing, turn himself over to do some press-ups and collapse face first onto the mat.

"It's not fair," he muttered as Zero carried on regardless.

"Hey, we can't help it," Adam said.

"Stop showing off," Kyle said breathlessly.

"I can't help being a genetically engineered killing machine. Just be glad you've got an excuse to be out of shape." The kid switched over to doing press-ups one handed, though managed to keep pace with Zero, actually raising less of a sweat than Zero was. "You can claim that you're not perfect."

"Neither are you kiddo," Zero said, increasing his pace slightly and trying to stop his heart from jumping up through his throat.

Zero though, knew that he wasn't going to win this one. In armour he might be able to tear Mavericks apart without taking a single hit, but out of armour he was another Human, though slightly stronger and faster. Adam on the other hand…

Adam had been engineered as a killing machine, the first of a long line of super-soldiers with something close to Reploid armour and the programming to make them merciless. Adam's programming hadn't been done properly, meaning that at a crucial point in his testing, he'd refused to kill a young girl. He'd promptly been deactivated, locked up and left until further tests could be run.

When Kyle and Kelly Jones had found Adam, they'd unleashed him, not knowing what they were dealing with. Even the young boy hadn't realised until he'd started having flashbacks and done quite a bit of damage to Kyle's lab, the lab where he had been found and a lot of the area in-between.

Zero lowered himself to the mat when he got to his thirtieth press-up and lay there, trying to ignore Adam's sniggers as he did. The kid was barely breaking a sweat right now and seemed to be enjoying the sight of his elders and supposed betters unable to keep up with him.

Slightly aggravated, Zero pushed himself to his feet and headed over to the mats that had been laid out for martial arts practise. Kieran seemed to be practising various holds with Angelo, though obviously didn't stand a chance of actually beating the Interfacer.

Zero watched for a minute, then Kieran seemed to notice him. "You want to try?"

"I wouldn't mind," said Neo as he came over.

"Okay then," Kieran said. "I'll go against Zero, you can take Angelo."

Zero managed to straighten himself up into a combat stance, then thrust out a fist sharply at Kieran, who blocked it easily, then responded with a spinning kick at waist height.

The pair of them attacked and blocked their way across the mat for a couple of minutes, stopping briefly when Neo nearly trod on Zero's foot and again when Kyle seemed to make a brief attempt at strangling Adam, who was still going strong at press-ups and talking at the same time.

The main time they stopped though, was when there was a high speed noise, a thump, a whooph of expelled breath, and a second later the sound of someone hitting a wall.

The pair of them turned and saw that Angelo had apparently punched Neo hard enough to send him flying across the several metre distance to the wall.

Neo was breathing hard, but managed to pick himself up. "You don't pull any punches," he said to Angelo eventually.

"On the contrary, I do," the Interfacer replied. "Had I wanted it to, that punch would have put you into orbit and levelled every building for about a mile."

Neo glared at him, then pulled himself up to his full height. "Fine. Just don't do it again." He stepped forward and squared up against Angelo again.

Zero turned back to Kieran. "Perhaps you think you can stop me Mr Reeves," he said in a mock German voice.

Kieran glanced at him, then assumed his best James Bond, defiantly facing certain death by ingenious methods, pose. "Do you expect me to submit, Dr Zero?"

"No Mr Reeves. I expect you to die of laughter." Zero leapt at Kieran and managed to rugby tackle him in mid-jump. He bore the younger Reeves brother to the ground and began to tickle him.

Kieran was crying with laughter when Zero leapt up off him and stood a couple of metres away, trying to contain his own laughter. "I learnt that one off Kyle," he admitted between chuckles.

Kieran seemed to panic a bit at that point. Wiping a tear away, Kieran climbed to his feet and glanced over at his brother, who was rolling round on the floor himself next to Adam, who seemed to be similarly affected. Jack, Neo, Warwick, Angelo, X and the Reverend seemed to hold themselves above laughing in such a manner, but even then they seemed to be having trouble.

"Kyle told you about those fights?"

Zero shook his head. "No, I just watched you pair a few weeks ago before we followed Kyle on that loony trip that was the last crossover. You both seemed to be having fun, though I didn't quite understand what you were going on about." He pulled a length of hair round so that it hung down his back rather than over his shoulder and grinned.

Kieran seemed to be unsure about whether to hit his brother or Zero, so it was probably fortunate that Adam chose that moment to collapse, totally out of breath.

While the Reverend and Kyle made sure that the kid hadn't killed himself, Zero, Kieran, Neo and Angelo swapped round so that Zero found himself up against Neo, while Kieran and Angelo went in for conversing while sparring again.

Jack wandered over and was watching the styles from the side of the mats.

Zero managed to land a few punches on Neo, before it happened.

Warwick had seated himself on top of a pile of mats and was enjoying watching everyone, when his enhanced senses picked up something.

Sliding his monocle into place, he looked round the hall, adjusting it's structure so that it would show any unusual energy fields. When he spotted the source, he realised that he should have known where to look right from the start.

As Zero tried to land a series of punches on Neo, the Timeforcer dodged each one of them, becoming faster each time till he was a blur when he avoided the last one before it had even started.

Zero stopped trying to hit him and stood there, totally dumbfounded. Neo shifted his eyes left and right, looked down at his hands, then in a lightning fast movement caught Zero in the chest.

The punch carried the Maverick Hunter several metres past the edge of the mats, where he skidded to a halt.

Warwick stood up, then lifted both feet so that he was sitting cross-legged in mid air. Others might have supported themselves by levitation, but then they didn't have a tail to sit on.

He watched with interest as Neo stood there, flexing muscles that Humans could only begin to imagine the existence of, then let out a cry of joy.

"Yahoo!"

Neo began to run very fast round the room, dodging round everyone else, apparently enjoying himself, till he tried to run past Angelo, who stuck out an arm at shoulder height in a blur that even Neo probably didn't see properly.

Neo ran into it. Angelo's arm didn't even shudder as the Timeforcer flipped round it a couple of times, then flew into the air, to land on his back, spread-eagled.

"Thanks. I needed that!"

"You looked like you did," Angelo commented. "I trust you're all here now."

Neo flipped onto his feet without his hands or arms touching the floor. "I feel great!"

Warwick rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. After a few days of being mortal, you'd have thought that Neo would have calmed down a bit.

"A most fortuitous event indeed," said the Reverend, standing and walking over to looked at Neo from a closer range. After a couple of minutes consideration, he nodded to himself, smiling in a way that suggested he knew something was going to happen, then went and sat down again.

Neo didn't seem to notice this part of the proceedings, and was enthusiastically looking round the hall, probably enjoying his newfound senses again. Kyle seemed to be trying to distract him with questions about how he felt and was he okay.

"He certainly seems to be enjoying himself," the Reverend commented to Warwick as they watched Neo.

How long do you think we have before it happens? Warwick pulled the watch on its chain out of his waistcoat pocket and looked down at the dial.

The Reverend seemed to concentrate for a few seconds. "I would say approximately five seconds," he decided. As he said it, he took a deep breath and closed his visible eye. All four of his ears flattened themselves so that he couldn't actually hear anything, while the secondary respiratory valves on the back of his neck and shoulders sealed themselves off.

Warwick understood these actions, though had enough experience that he didn't need to go through them himself.

Despite this though, he cringed as, five seconds later, a massive ripple appeared round Neo and spread outwards. Angelo was standing almost at the centre when it happened and didn't even seem to flinch, though given the amount of disturbance created by the ripple Angelo could probably have done a jig and Warwick wouldn't have known.

As the equalisation wave passed over him, Warwick shuddered. He'd only been through such a wave once before, by mistake. The feeling of different parts of you being in totally different states, one boiling and the other freezing, was the worst part for a Human, especially when you clued onto the fact that there wasn't any change in temperature. What there was, was a different energy level in the rest of the multiverse.

The yells of surprise of the others could be heard, Dopplering madly as they passed through the wave, which was travelling at about two thirds the local speed of sound. These though were almost blocked out by the sound of Neo screaming in either shock or pain.

As the ripple passed through the wall behind him, Warwick looked up. All of the Maverick Hunters had collapsed and were either lying very still or shaking violently. The Reverend seemed to grow larger as his ears and eye sprang open at the same instant that he stood up.

Warwick also hopped off the mats he'd been sitting on and scuttled across the floor to check out some of them. Angelo was crouching next to Jack and Kyle, helping them to uncurl. As the only ones of the group that had done any serious Multiversal travel, that pair were most likely to recover first and be able to help sort out the others.

Adam was the most trouble to uncurl, as it became clear from his mumblings that it had been like having the flashbacks all over again.

Once all of them were on their feet again, Warwick turned his attention to Neo, who was still lying where he'd collapsed, an expression of shock spread across his features.

Warwick leapt onto the Timeforcer's chest and stared at Neo's chin for a few seconds before Neo seemed to realise that something was going on and looked down at Warwick. "What just happened?"

"An Equalisation Wave," the Reverend said. "This universe had adapted to you having a certain amount of power to draw on. When you suddenly gained an awful lot more, the stresses would have torn it apart, had it not done that to even them out. Suffice to say, it is lucky that you did not try doing anything especially impressive before that happened otherwise the Wave would have torn the building apart."

"Why didn't that happen when I lost my powers?" Neo pulled himself to his feet, tipping Warwick onto the floor as he did.

"It did," came the quick reply. "But when it happened, you were not in this universe. You were somewhere between the Black Lands and this universe, where greater stress changes than that occur every few nanoseconds."

Neo gaped at the Reverend, then shook his head. "I never wanted a life like this."

Chapter 11 – Land's End

Neo and Angelo were a series of blurs that shot back and forth across the hall, accompanied by a rushing noise and the occasional flicker as one of them stepped too close and one of the Maverick Hunters was caught in the Time-Slicer field for an instant.

"Well Neo certainly seems to be back on his feet," Jack commented.

"Yeah," Zero commented, absently rubbing at his chest where Neo had punched him.

"This does of course, present us with a useful option," the Reverend said.

"What sort of option? As far as I can see all this means is that we'll have one more super-being helping us fight, and, no offence meant, look where you three have helped us to get to so far." Zero glanced round as he spoke, clearly not caring that he was insulting something that could tear him to bits before he could move.

"Ah," said the Reverend, apparently having not noticed the potential insult, "but now we not only have three Interfacers, but, more importantly a Timeforcer as well."

"And the significance of that is…" X wrapped a towel round his shoulders as he sat down next to them, then used one end to mop his forehead.

"The only way to stop Terranew totally would be to destroy the Black Lands. Without that, they would have nowhere to draw patterns for their Guards from. Unfortunately, owing to the parasitic nature of the Black Lands, a single species could not destroy it. You need the energies of at least two super-evolutionary species like Timeforcers or Interfacers in order to do it, so that even if the Parasite adapts to the energies of one, it will not be able to handle the other."

There was a blur across the centre of the room and Neo and Angelo were suddenly standing in front of them. "I guess that I'm the other species. Why couldn't you find some other Timeforcer? There must be some of them that are on speaking terms with you surely."

Angelo nodded. "There are. But that would mean calling in favours or suddenly owing them to people. You're already in the middle of this, and are probably going to want to seriously prod buttock in the near future."

Neo glanced at him, then grinned. "When you put it like that…"

"I do," Angelo said.

"Well then… What are we waiting for?"

A glance passed between Warwick, Angelo and the Reverend. "Is that a serious question?" Angelo didn't seem to want to guess.

"Er. Yeah?"

Angelo sighed. "Okay for those who can't guess: a Portal. We do want to get in there after all, and, like a vampire, I'm never one to go where I'm not invited."

Anyway, Warwick commented, the energy flows will be weakest just after a portal's closed. That's the best time to attack.

"Until then we need to work on plans," Angelo said.

"Plans?" Neo didn't seem to want to bother.

"Of course," Angelo said. "The main part will be that you are the honour of launching the first attack."

"What sort of honour is that?"

"Quite simply, you attack, the Black Lands adapt to your powers so you can't hurt them, then us pair hit it with everything, wiping out the whole thing."

"Aww, can't I kill it? It was me that it staked."

Angelo glared at him. "If you attack first then there's two of us to follow it up. If we attack first then we've got you to back us up on your own. Can you deal a more devastating blow than me and the monkey?"

Neo looked guilty. "Um… Maybe?"

Angelo glared at him again. "Don't believe it for an instant."

Neo shrugged. "All right boss, just don't say I didn't warn you."

Why not? Warwick looked with interest. You haven't warned us about anything yet.

There was a pause, then Neo slapped the palm of his hand onto his forehead. "Damn! I hate literalists."

Jack's house was the scene of their next wait, though this time, there was a more hopeful air to the atmosphere.

"Game of cards anyone?" Neo pulled a pack out of an inner pocket of his newly materialised jacket.

Jack stared at them, then reached out and pulled five cards off the top of the pile. Neo grinned sheepishly as Jack looked down at the five kings in his hand.

"So it's not a standard set," Neo said defensively. "Or rather it is, just not for this universe."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, fingering the King of Crowns.

"So what d'you want to play?" Neo retrieved the King and pulled three more packs of cards out, each one showing a top card of an unfamiliar design. "We've got cards for Sabacc, Poker, Pyramids, Might and Magic…"

Jack shook his head sadly. "Ever heard of Cheat?"

Neo glanced at him. "I know many ways to cheat…"

Jack groaned. "No. Cheat with a capital 'C'." When Neo continued to look blank, he shrugged. "It's simple. Provided you understand the rules."

"What rules?"

"Basically, you split the pack between everyone that's playing. You then take it in turns to put down any number of cards, face down, in the centre. You have to at least claim to put down cards of the same face value. If someone thinks that you're cheating, they say 'cheat'."

"How do you cheat exactly," Neo said.

"Simple: you don't have to tell the truth about what card's you're putting down!"

Neo blinked at him slowly, then frowned. "How are you supposed to tell if someone's cheating?"

"Say for instance that I put down three cards and said that they were all sixes. If you had two of the sixes, then you'd know I was cheating. If though we were playing with one of your packs and I had put down three sixes, then you'd have to keep all the cards in the middle. The winner is the first person to not have any cards."

"And if I caught you cheating?"

"I pick up the cards," Jack said shortly.

Neo seemed to consider. "Well it's better than nothing for now."

Jack considered, then headed out of the room, returning a few minutes later with a table which he laid out in the middle of the room. "Who's playing?"

All three Interfacers decided to join in, along with Neo, Kyle, and Jack made up the sixth. All of them settled around the table, either sitting on their heels or kneeling.

Angelo selected a pack of cards, then began to shuffle them. At first he was moving at about normal speed for someone shuffling cards, slowly and carefully. Slowly though, he sped up until his hands and the cards were a blur. For an instant it looked like he had all of the cards in a long line in mid air, faces down, before he grabbed them all and they began to blur in and between four piles.

While his hands were blurring, Angelo looked up, apparently not actually seeing what his hands were doing. "Warwick?"

The Monkey leapt up onto the table, clapped his hands together, then held them in the manner of a baseball backstop expecting a ball to come right at him in a perfect miss.

The four piles, two of which were several centimetres off the top of the table and the other pair of which were vertical but moving so fast that no one could see the faces, suddenly began to decrease in size as Angelo began to flick the cards across the table in a long stream.

Like a professional Warwick caught the cards and began to arrange them into a house of cards, starting at the top and working down, while leaving a half-centimetre gap between the cards so that none of them touched.

The top cards were just beginning to fall as Warwick completed the bottom row, then the little Interfacer collapsed the entire house into four piles again, and looked around the table with interest.

"Show off," Kyle said, lowering himself properly to the floor so that he was sitting. He'd probably guessed that this could take a while.

Warwick grinned and glanced at Neo, who shrugged and held his hands ready. As the cards began flying at him, Neo's hands began to blur as well, this time building a house of cards starting at the bottom but upside down so that there were more cards at the top.

The house hung there for a second, before each card suddenly decided to fall into a single neat pile in Neo's hand. As the last one landed, Neo spread them out across the table in a single sweeping motion, then jerked his hands back as the Reverend held out his own hand and the cards jumped up into it.

Or not quite into it. The cards hovered a centimetre above his palm and stacked themselves into a pile. They then compressed together until there was only one card, then exploded upwards, forming, for an instant, an outline of a tree, then falling back on the table.

As they landed each one was grabbed and distributed so that there were six even piles of cards, with nine for each of them, face down in front of them.

All of them reached forward and picked up their piles. Jack frowned at his selection. Three Queens was good, provided he played it later after someone else had already put down a couple of Queens. Two sixes were okay. Two nines were likewise okay. A King and an Eight finished off the hand.

"How do we decide who goes first?" Kyle had allowed all of them a minute to consider before asking that.

They all seemed to consider, then Angelo began to go through his jacket pockets.

"I don't think we can toss a coin for this," Neo commented. "Unless you have any jLphanis currency."

Angelo cast a split second glare at him, then carried on looking through his pockets. Gradually a pile began to accumulate on the table of various designs of dice, no majority of which seemed to have the same number of sides. There were half a dozen four sided ones, two of which had pictures rather than numbers. One dice had a '50' on one side and looked like a sphere because it had so many sides. At least three of the others seemed to have sides that changed value if they were even touched, while one didn't seem to have a single shape and seemed to change the number of sides it had every few seconds.

Eventually, after about a hundred dice had been produced from various jacket pockets, a six sided one turned up. It was wooden, painted green, with the dots one each side done as indents filled with gold paint.

Shovelling the rest of the die into one pocket, Angelo held up the last one. "Okay then. I'm one, remember your number, going round clockwise." He gave them a minute to think about it, then flicked the dice across the table.

It spun for an instant, bounced off a pile of cards, then settled itself down to a seven.

Neo swore. "Sorry. Focus of probability."

Angelo picked up the dice and examined each of the sides in turn, counting under his breath as he did. "You snitched the three you twit." Jack grinned as Angelo glared at the offending side, then flicked it across the table again. This time the dice rolled around a bit, then settled down to a four, meaning that Kyle went first.

He scrutinised his cards for a minute, then carefully put down three Eights. Jack almost accused him of cheating, then hesitated. For a brief instant he considered pulling out the sunglasses that Angelo had given him and using them to look round, then realised that all of the Interfacers would realise what he was up to instantly.

"Just out of interest," he said, "how do we know that you four aren't cheating?"

Warwick grinned. Because we're all spending most of our time blocking each others powers, so can't.

Jack nodded, then glanced at the Reverend, who focussed his eye on his cards, then slid a couple of them out. "Two Eights."

Jack blinked, looked down at his own cards, then shook his head. "Cheat."

The Reverend smiled toothily, and turned over the three cards that had been put down so far. Kyle had put down two Eights and a Nine, but the Reverend had put down two sevens. The cards went into his hand, along with the rest of them.

"My turn," Neo said happily. "Two Aces."

Angelo looked down at his cards, then moved a couple of them round so that he could see them more clearly. He slowly and deliberately put the two cards down. "Two Jokers."

Jack frowned, then glanced across at Neo, who shrugged. "I can't help it if he didn't check out the pack before dealing them."

Can we get on with this, Warwick said. Three Queens.

Jack glanced at him, then pulled out his own Queens. "Three Queens."

"Cheat," Kyle said. When Jack grinned, Kyle groaned and picked up the top three cards. "So what did Warwick put down?"

Warwick, it seemed, had decided to go for the simple approach and had placed a random selection of cards down.

Kyle sorted through his hand, then put down several cards. "Four Queens."

The Reverend frowned, then slipped some cards onto the pile. "Four Twos."

Neo didn't hesitate when he put down some more cards. "Two Eights."

As Angelo reached out to put down his cards, an alarm sounded.

"Ah, the time is upon us," the Reverend said, leaping to his feet with remarkable agility, and without managing to let his robe get above his ankles.

Jack nodded absently as he stood and headed over to the screen next to the clock. "Getting a strong signal. Looks like it's coming from somewhere around the town centre. Terranew might not even have to move a Generator it's so close to their building."

With a thought he activated his armour, then slipped on the sunglasses. As the world changed from it's normal colour scheme to the highlighted energy flows that the glasses presented him with, he glanced round at the others.

"Let's go Bustin'."

Xtreme glanced round quickly as he materialised in the middle of the city centre. The others appeared around him, while Angelo, Warwick, the Reverend and Neo blurred into existence nearby, having taken the more scenic route and run the whole way.

Around them, people were running and screaming. The general direction was obvious and Xtreme looked in the direction that they were looking away from. "I think we're too late."

Several Creatures were visible in the distance, over the heads of the fleeing crowd. Even using Radar Optics, Xtreme couldn't get a good look at them, but what little he could see wasn't nice.

"I suspect the Portal will remain open for a further twenty seconds," the Reverend supplied. He'd pulled the hood of his robe up over his head and tucked his hands into his sleeves some time between arriving and saying that.

"Agreed," Neo spun his shades round a finger, then flicked them onto his nose. "Let's get 'em."

All four of them suddenly blurred as they accelerated and leapt at a point in the air. Lightning seemed to encase them for an instant, before they and the lightning simply vanished.

"I guess we're left holding this lot at bay," Zero said wirily, drawing his Z-Sabre as he did.

Xtreme drew his Z-Sabre and activated his X-Buster at the same time. "Here comes the first."

The crowd scattered wildly as the first Creature pushed it's way towards them. Perhaps in some way the Black Lands understood who was responsible for attempting it's destruction and was aiming to take them out.

Something looking like a giant locust reared it's head over the crowd and seemed to focus all three of it's multi-faceted eyes on them. Fangs that dripped some kind of green slime vibrated in anticipation. Almost a dozen legs skittered back and forth across the tarmac, while four almost transparent wings flapped lazily in the air.

All of them brought up their weapons and began to fire, pouring plasma bolts onto the Creature's carapace in an effort to weaken it.

The thing screamed, some kind of rattling screech that bounced around the nearby buildings, then leapt at them, legs flailing.

All of them had the sense to roll out of the way as it came down, so avoided the fate of the tarmac directly beneath the Creature, which began to bubble furiously, then

One legs caught Zero across the chest, leaving scratch marks across the surface. He and Xtreme managed to sever a leg each with their sabres, while 84 activated all six of his blades and seemed to take out three legs. The thing screamed again, and beat it's wings rapidly to gain height, scattering them all with the downdraft.

As they all tried to roll to their feet, the thing spat some of the green slime down at them with a sound like a haddock being slapped against wet sand. It hit the tarmac, bubbled furiously, then exploded upwards in a cloud of steam.

All of them began firing into the air, trying to take the Creature out. One of it's wings burst into flames under the barrage and burnt for a few seconds before healing up.

Realising that there would be other Creatures in the area, and that they would have to act fast, Xtreme activated his Falcon Armour. Vertically Air-Dashing, he gained height rapidly, until he was alongside the Creature's head.

In one sharp motion, he brought his Z-Sabre round and through the thing's eyes.

He hovered back a few metres as it began to thrash in the air, then lurched to one side as some kind of whip-like tongue shot out and tried to wrap itself round his leg.

Flipping over, he managed to avoid the tongue as it went back in, then stopped and stared in amazement as the thing's head seemed to liquefy and flow together into one single eye.

In a couple of quick flaps the Creature shot towards him, forcing him to dive downwards. As he did so, one of it's legs snagged his foot, throwing him off balance and causing him to spiral out of control for a second.

Barely managing to right himself, he turned back to the Creature in time to see it spit in the direction of Shades.

Shades managed to raise his Proto-shield and caught the stuff on the front of it. Before it had even started to bubble, he frisbeed it into the air, aiming for the Creature so that when it exploded, it was almost directly beneath the thing.

The Creature didn't seem to be worried by what was going on beneath it, and merely wiped the slime off it's belly with a leg.

Grimacing at how ineffectual the slime was against the Creature, Xtreme landed on top of a nearby building and changed to his Hyper Giga Crusher.

The world around him began to glow as he charged up to the point where his safety systems were beginning to sound shrill, then fired off a shot that almost knocked him over with the recoil and hit the Creature straight into it's belly.

Trigger glanced up as the Giga Crusher shot hit the Creature, then dived to the side as something leapt at him from behind.

As he rolled his sensors picked up the Creature in the air disintegrating, while they tried to pinpoint the source of the last attack. Getting up into a crouch and looking round, he located it.

Something like a hairy beanbag was a few metres away from him. It's entire surface seemed to be twenty centimetre long grey/ white hairs. As he watched it, the thing pushed itself up onto a couple of equally hairy legs, shuffled round, and fixed a pair of overlarge eyes on him.

As he struggled to his feet, it took a couple of steps towards him, then launched itself forward, a hung mouth filled with teeth opening up, aimed at his head.

Trigger got his T-Buster up and fired down the Creature's throat.

The recoil stopped the Creature in mid-air while the shot itself burst out of the Creature's back an instant later.

As it collapsed, Trigger shrugged to himself. Evidently the Black Lands was running out of good or strong ideas.

He was about to turn around, when something big and heavy crushed a car a few metres to his left.

Moving slowly, Trigger turned his head to looked at the car. There wasn't much left. Sticking up through the car though was what looked like a leg of sorts.

Trigger whipped round to look at whatever was standing almost directly behind him. He then had to look up a bit to see more of it.

The Creature was at least twenty metres tall, with green skin, and flame red hair that started in an Mohawk, then ran down it's neck, covered it's shoulders, then came down it's back. It was bipedal, though it's head was between it's shoulder blades, it's arms were about ten metres long and it's fingers were simply blank stumps, while it's ears poked out sideways like wings.

It's face was interesting. Green eyes looked out from above a nose that was closer to being a snout than a genuine nose. The mouth stretched almost from ear to ear, and was filled with hundreds of sharp looked teeth.

The thing raised a hammer with a head the size and general shape of a truck above it's head, then brought it down hard, on the spot that Trigger had been standing on an instant before. The boom and shockwave caused Trigger to trip over before he could stand up, which saved his life because the Creature brought some kind of huge sword round through the space that his chest would have been in had he managed to get to his feet.

Rolling again, trying to get some distance from the Creature, he leapt to his feet, and fired off a couple of Medium charge shots at the thing's head. As the plasma bolts hit it, it flinched slightly, then roared loud enough to rattle the pavement under their feet, then brought it's hammer down again.

This time, instead of simply smashing the ground up, the hammer flashed for an instant, then lightning jumped from it's surface in the direction of all of the Maverick Hunters.

Trigger had barely registered that it was there before he was flung backwards by the bolt.

Non-conductive shielding: 25% Efficiency

Minor Electrical Disruption To Internal Systems

Repair Systems Active…

Flipping himself over, Trigger began to pump rapid fire shots at the Creature for all he was worth. With his non-conductive shielding in that state, he'd be lucky to survive another attack like that.

The others seemed to have the same idea, though Xtreme was firing slightly slower than the rest of them on account of using the Giga Crusher. The Creature swatted at the air with it's sword and hammer, as if the shots were merely flies that would go away if it hit them just right.

For a minute Trigger considered unleashing his Shining Laser, though given the affect that had brought out in the Guards, he guessed that it might not be any good now.

Suddenly the Creature seemed to tire of swatting plasma bolts, and took a swipe at Xtreme with it's sword.

Trigger shifted his aim as the sword came round, hitting the blade a couple of times. Xtreme was dodging as fast as he could at the same time, meaning that the combined effect got him out of range with centimetres to spare.

Displaying some of his usual recklessness, Zero chose this time to do something daring. He leapt and Air-Dashed straight up twenty metres, then switched to horizontal and hit the Creature in the head at several hundred miles per hour, with his Z-Sabre extended forward like a lance.

The Z-Sabre buried itself to the hilt in the Creature's forehead, while Zero planted a foot inside the thing's ear and on one eyebrow to steady himself while he tried to pull the Sabre out.

The Thing was so intent on attacking Xtreme, that it didn't seem to notice Zero until he lost his footing and nearly kicked it's eye out with his foot.

Driving it's sword deep into the tarmac, the Creature reached a hand up and grabbed Zero round the waist. There was a faint struggle for an instant, then Zero and his Sabre were pulled from the Creature's forehead.

Deciding that it was worth risking, Trigger brought up his left and sighted along the targeting crosshair that was projected onto his retina. The silver beam shot out and struck the Creature in the eye as it lifted Zero up for inspection.

It pulled it's head backwards as the beam hit it, then pulled it forward again with a speed that would have given a Human whiplash.

Trigger leapt into the air, aiming for a space behind a rock, while shifting his aim to the Creature's other eye, hoping to blind it, at least for a few seconds. As he aimed though, the eyes glowed, and he felt himself slow down.

Sensory Perception: Failing

Motor Functions: Failing

Data Processiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

X watched, slightly horrified as a green glow surrounded Trigger and the kid simply slowed down and stopped in mid-air. As he slowed the glow solidified until he stopped, when it looked like a strangely dyed novelty ice-cube, hanging in mid-air.

Realising that this could get a lot worse, very fast, especially for Zero, X drew his Z-Sabre and Dashed at the Creature's nearest leg.

He skidded to a halt and brought the Sabre round in a tight curve that should have taken it right through and severed the thing's foot from it's leg.

As it was, he suddenly realised why Zero had been left hanging on the Creature's forehead rather than using the Z-Sabre to abseil down it's face: the Z-Sabre stuck solidly several centimetres into the Creature's leg.

X stared at the Sabre as it glowed fitfully, then pulled hard to get it out and tossed himself into a backflip as the Creature tried to swat him away with it's hammer.

Landing on a piece of flat ground several metres away, X ducked down onto one knee and powered up his X-Buster. Instead of targeting the Creature though, he targeted it's hammer, aiming for the binding that held the head onto the wooden handle.

Plasma bolts ripped across the surface of whatever the handle and rope were made of. X kept up the rate of fire for several seconds before one of the ropes suddenly snapped and the head shot off the hammer and flew into the front end of a shop.

Afraid that someone might just have been killed, but unwilling to risk distracting himself from the Creature, X carried on firing, targeting the handle of it's sword this time.

Apparently annoyed at the way it's weapons were being slowly dismantled, the Creature glared at X, then threw Zero at him in an over-arm bowl that would have been the envy of most cricket players.

Dodging Zero, X continued to fire at the thing's sword, until it tried to pole-axe him with the handle of it's hammer.

As it hit him, X was knocked to his back, then driven into the ground, startled at the fact that the handle, despite looking like wood, was as tough as Titanium-X armour.

As the pole was withdrawn, X tried to pull himself out of the hole that had been made in the tarmac. He was startled that it was at least thirty centimetres deep, meaning that he'd been forced almost totally beneath the level of the street.

Fearing a follow-up attack, he stood, feeling motor systems fight to realign themselves after what they'd been put through, and looked around.

The Creature had raised it's arm, holding the handle like a wand, then brought it down so that instead of hitting X with it, the Creature merely ended up pointing it at him.

X was already airborne and still accelerating under the force of a continuous Vertical Air-Dash when the handle stopped, pointing exactly where he had been standing a second before.

Despite not being in the target area, X still felt the attack as if he had been.

As lines of fire crawled across his armour and the air around him, a sense of weariness, of hopelessness, spread through him.

External Temperature: 760°K and Rising

External Armour Plating: 82% Efficiency

Invasive Presence Detected

Emotional Subroutines Being Overridden

Repair Systems Active…

Emergency Emotional Routines Active…

X felt the cold precision spread through him like a wave of cold water. Icy logic replaced hopelessness, calculation replaced intuition.

As his exterior temperature continued to rise, he gave his Dash capability more of a kick, then switched direction so that he was heading diagonally rather than straight up.

Logical operations took less time to calculate than decisions influenced by emotion, so X's brain was literally racing along as his Battle Computer linked itself directly into his mind and began to throw ideas around.

In most cases so far the Creatures have been very strong externally, but weak internally. The case with the Z-Sabre was probably as a result of interaction between the external and internal influences causing a greater than usual degree of resistance to movement. An X-Buster shot straight into it's mouth should be able to reach the internal areas where it is more vulnerable.

Twisting in mid-air, X brought up his X-Buster, his Battle Computer going through likely angles for him so that he wouldn't have to think about them. The targeting sight settled itself on the Creature's mouth, and X fired off a Full Charge shot between it's teeth before it could close it's mouth.

The shot went into it's mouth and the explosion as it hit something in there was visible even through it's mismatching teeth. For an instant it belched flames as it roared in pain, then it focussed it's gaze on X.

As he glided through the air, still under the momentum of his last Dash, he saw that the Creature's eyes were glowing again, though they had changed to blue rather than green. As he continued to watch, various subroutines calculated the best course of action and the likely means of attack that he would be subjected to.

The calculations had just come to a list of conclusions, when the eyes of the Creature flashed a brighter blue, and everything else vanished.

Blue beams shot out of the Creature's eyes, striking X at the top of his curve. Shades watched in amazement as X stopped in mid-air and hung there for a second, suspended in the glowing beam.

After that second though, the beams vanished, leaving X hanging there for an instant longer, before gravity took over.

Shades was the closest to him, so took off at a run, and reached him just as he hit the ground. He considered Dashing, but reasoned that X was too close for that, and the ground was so beaten up that he wouldn't have been able to keep his footing at all.

As he knelt next to X, he ran a practised mechanic's eye over him. His armour was steaming slightly, and a layer of ice had appeared across the surface of it. The Maverick Hunter's face was tightly drawn, the ice still covering it. Which is odd; his systems maintain a constant armour temperature. It should at least be melting by now.

Shades felt the Creature's gaze on him as he knelt there, and was moving before it had a chance to attack. Whatever it had done to X had been effective and seemed to have shut down most of his systems, and there wasn't anything that any of them could do about that right now.

Air-Dashing in the direction of the roof of a nearby building, Shades rolled as he landed on it, then spun round and began to fire in the direction of the Creature.

As he fired, it seemed to tire of him, and pulled it's sword out of the ground. It pointed it in his direction, and the edge of the blade seemed to glow for an instant.

Going by his instincts, Shades leapt into the air and landed a few metres to the left of where he'd been. Glancing round, he saw he'd been right to do so; the wall that had been behind him had a massive cut through it, as if the Creature had thrust the sword into the wall.

Leaping again, Shades landed on the ground fifteen metres below the rooftop. Leaping off to one side, he got off a couple of shots while in mid-air, then landed rolling and fired again.

The Creature was about to gesture with it's sword again, when Zero, who'd been peppering it with occasional shots since recovering from being used as a Human dart, took a running jump and hit it with the full force of a Quake Blazer attack in it's chest with his Z-Sabre.

The force of the attack caused the Creature to rock back on it's heels, nearly toppling it over. An instant later Xtreme and 84 followed up that attack with a Giga Crusher shot and two Heavy Charge shots respectively.

The Creature screamed again, then brought the handle of it's hammer down on the ground, point first.

Shades watched, slightly amazed, as a tower of fire burst out of the ground, shooting upwards, consuming the Creature and Zero in it's intensity.

Shades took a run at it, hoping that it was committing suicide, then skidded to a halt, horrified by what he saw.

The Creature had changed, presumably either evolving in some way or dying so that another could come through in it's place. This new one was, if anything, worse than the previous one.

It was roughly the same height as the last one, but built differently. A head that was wreathed in fire seemed unconnected to the rest of the Creature, except by another column of fire, running in place of a spine. The rest of it was similarly burning, with skeletal arms and legs attached by flames to a torso which seemed to be mainly hollow.

The thing's head seemed to have been based around a skull, though of what animal it was hard to tell; certainly it hadn't been Human. The eyes were huge, with points of red light hanging in the middle of them. The jaw would probably have been at home in a dentist's surgery for use as spare parts, since none of the teeth seemed to match up in size or shape so there would have been plenty for anyone. The bottom jaw flopped around about a metre below the upper one, as if suspended from it by rubber bands.

Shades stood there, amazed by the transformation, until the Creature raised a flesh-less hand and pointed at him with a finger.

He stood there for an instant, then felt something in his chest give way. Shutting out his pain sensors, he Air-Dashed up to the top of the building behind him, then checked his diagnostics.

Minor Damage to Components in Chest Area

No Serious Damage to Operational Capabilities

Repair Systems Active…

Looking down at himself, he realised that whatever the Creature had done, it had left him with hairline fractures all over his chest armour.

Glancing up, he saw the Creature take a step towards him, then raise it's other hand, in which it held some kind of pole. He stared at it for a few seconds, then leapt a second too late as the end of the tube exploded in a series of tendrils, each of which crossed the intervening twenty metres in less than a second and wrapped themselves round his legs.

As he felt them tighten their grip around him, they also began to pull sharply in the direction of the Creature.

Having lost his Proto-Shield earlier, his only option was to try cutting himself free with his X-Buster. The speed with which he was pulled though, left his arms dragging behind him until he came to a stop with the Creature's flames licking around his armour and his feet still held firmly in the grasp of it's weapon.

External Armour Temperature: 560°K and Rising

As he hung there, trying to work out if he was likely to suffer from the flames, be felt himself being lifted up so that he was on level with the Creature's head.

For a ludicrous moment, he was worried that it might try to eat him, though given it's lack of throat he'd probably just fall right through it's body to the floor, which, given the way the tarmac was smouldering, might be a bad thing.

Instead he found his head raised up to eye level with the Creature, which turned him round a couple of times, apparently examining him.

Upside down, with his gyroscopic system spinning madly, Shades was having trouble enough not being dizzy, without trying to worry about shooting. Then again, it's covered in fire, so what good would a plasma based weapon do?

As he found himself spun round to face it once more, he noticed that what had a few seconds before been mere points of light in it's head where it's eyes should have been, had become brighter. As he tried to look away, they got brighter, till he suddenly found himself looking at the equivalent of magnesium flares.

As they continued to grow brighter, he felt his motor control begin to fail, followed by his data processing slowing, dragging his sensory perception to nearly nothing along with all his other systems.

His last conscious thought, was that these things should never be trusted not to pull a fast one on you.

84 saw Shades dragged over to the Creature and cursed. The thing was strong enough to tear any of them to bits at a second's notice after all.

When it simply held him up and it's eyes glowed, visible even through the back of it's head, he cursed more fluently.

"What's up?" Beside him Xtreme apparently couldn't see what was happening to his brother. 84 wondered about this for a second, then remembered the sunglasses perched beneath his helmet.

"I think we may have trouble on the way." He raised his E-Buster as the Creature turned to face them, aiming for it's torso, but uncertain about what effect his weapon would have.

Xtreme gasped as he spotted his brother, hanging limply in the monster's grip. He seemed about to rush forward, when the Creature lowered Shades and dropped him on the ground.

Being a devout cynic, 84 knew that this was not a good thing. The only time that the Creatures made sure they weren't damaging you was when they had something worse planned for a few seconds later.

This turned out to be true, when Shades stood up, and turned to face them. His face was twitching, but the central expression seemed to be one of superior disgust, the sort that a microbe might see if it looked up a microscope. The sort that was typical of the attitude of the Creatures of the Black Lands.

"What the hell?" Xtreme was simply staring at his brother, who was walking jerkily towards them.

Knowing the Xtreme would never be able to shoot down his own brother, even to save his own life, 84 raised his E-Buster again, sighting at Shades' head, aiming to fire a shot that would hopefully disable him, but would certainly guarantee that he was out of the rest of the fight.

Xtreme didn't seem to notice him until he had the E-Buster up, but still managed to grab it before he could fire.

Shades stopped a few metres away, as if amused by their actions, then they all looked round sharply as, behind them, a manhole cover erupted into the air, propelled by several thousand litres of water that followed it at high speed.

As the water came down around them, 84 managed, through his sunglasses, to pick out a form coming together inside the impromptu geyser. As the form finally came together, the fountain died away, until Xtreme was also able to see the form that stood on top of the manhole.

The Walrus that had vanished into the water during their fight with the Timeforcer at the Sea Life Centre, was back, with it's own personal flash-flood.

Uncertain of what this meant, 84 hesitated. Through the energy flows depicted across the sunglasses' lenses, he could see that this thing was not a Creature of the Black Lands. In fact, if he was reading the flows correctly, this thing was an Interfacer.

Does that make it bad or good? After all not all of the Interfacers are going to be 'good' are they.

Xtreme was slowly raising his X-Buster, pointing it at the Walrus, which didn't even seem to notice them. Instead, it's attention was focused at Shades, who was still just behind them.

84 flicked his attention briefly back and forth between the Walrus and Shades, then noticed a major point. Shades doesn't seem to know what to make of this thing. The Creature's have never had that problem with each other.

As he realised this, the Walrus leaned forwards slightly, and it's eyes began to glow.

"Don't look," 84 whispered quickly to Xtreme, before grabbing the other and pulling him down to the tarmac, face down.

Even without seeing that gaze, 84 could feel it. He could feel it going through his mind, turning out every thought, every memory. Every part of his mind was held up for inspection, everything was brought out into daylight and examined. The most embarrassing details of his life were put under a microscope and studied. Nearby he could feel the same happening to others, probably Xtreme and Shades. But in one case things weren't just being examined; they were being thrown out as well. The feeling went on for what seemed like hours…

With a suddenness that made him catch his breath, 84 felt the presence of the Walrus withdraw from his mind.

Looking up, he saw that it hadn't moved, though the water around it had settled a bit. In fact, what had seemed to take hours, had only lasted a few seconds.

Remembering Shades, 84 turned sharply, and saw that the Maverick Hunter had collapsed to his knees, head hanging and breathing hard. Above him hung a ghost of fire, tendrils of which continued to stream out of the slightest chink in his armour. As 84 watched, the ghostly shape seemed to twist in the air, then faded from sight.

"Huh?" Beside him, Xtreme had almost pulled himself to his feet and was staring at his brother in shock.

"I think we just saw an exorcism," 84 commented, before looking back at the Walrus. "Thanks mate."

The Walrus nodded at him, then looked up sharply at something behind him. 84 turned sharply, and found that the Creature had taken a step towards them and was glaring.

"You know," 84 said conversationally, "I think our friend here has a pretty good idea of how to deal with this sort of thing. But I'll deal with it myself instead."

As Xtreme frowned, he raised his E-Buster, sighting along the targeting crosshair that appeared and flashed across his retina. With a sense of calm the likes of which he hadn't felt for years, he lined at a heavy duty manhole cover in the middle of the main road, and fired.

The Plasma Bolt tore the top half of the cover away, while the sudden loss in it's integrity did the rest. Several thousand litres of high-pressure water spewed out in a matter of seconds, passing through the Creature's torso without touching anything, then ramming up into the inside of it's skull with the force of a small bomb.

Steam clouds erupted in all directions, and the Creature screamed loudly enough to shatter most of the shop windows that hadn't all ready been broken by the fighting.

"It's an interesting thing you know," 84 yelled at Xtreme over the roar of the water and the screams, "unlike in many universes, the engineers here deemed that it was cheaper to keep water at high pressure underground rather than pump it to a higher level than the houses! Useful thing to know in a situation like this!"

"That's the city's main water supply?!"

84 glanced at Xtreme. "It's the lesser of two evils right now! Literally!"

As the city's automatic systems cut in, registering a massive loss of pressure, the water below them was diverted away to other storage tanks. As the clouds of steam began to clear, the Maverick Hunters could see that the Creature had already begun to disintegrate, bits of it having been carried off into the air by the force of the water. The other thing that seemed to have vanished was the Walrus, though hopefully that was for good reasons.

The pair of them got unsteadily to their feet, shaking themselves to try to get the water off their armour. Off to one side, X was pulling the last scraps of ice off himself, while Trigger seemed to have returned to normal time and was also getting up.

"That was weird," Trigger commented as he staggered over to join them.

Xtreme nodded in agreement, then looked around. "Where's Zero?"

The long haired Maverick Hunter was no where to be seen.

Angelo wove his way through the energy lines that appeared at the Portal tried to close easily. He'd been doing more difficult things than this for years without having to worry about them.

The four of them shot out into the Black Lands, Angelo diving and rolling rather than trying to land running.

He did stand quickly though, looking round for anything that might be actively dangerous to them. The area was sandy, with occasional patches of mud, stone, grasses and so forth.

Warwick spoke first. We must have taken three minutes getting through that Portal.

"We did," Neo said, rearranging his shades and looking around. "It was more crowded than this last time I was here."

Angelo swore. "Should have realised. The Black Lands may not be sentient, but it'll still realise that we're trying to kill it and attempt to do something about that. Now the most likely thing is going to be that it'll divert it's powers into a couple of very nasty Creatures to take on the others."

"We should make haste then," the Reverend said. "If we can do enough internal damage to it, then we may save them some trouble."

Angelo nodded and looked around. "Okay then Neo, whenever you're ready. Just remember; no fancy stuff. We're looking for pure Destruction in it's most elemental form, not fireballs."

Neo nodded and looked around. "This should be a good place," he said, indicating a spot in the middle of the sandy ground they were standing on. The Timeforcer closed his eyes, took a deep breath and brought himself to something like attention.

The others waited expectantly for a few seconds, before Neo opened one guilty eye. "Just one fireball?"

Angelo groaned loudly. "If you really feel that you must."

Neo smiled at them, then turned away and closed his eyes again. Slowly and deliberately, he raised a hand above his head, pointing it at the perpetual darkness that made up the sky.

Angelo raised an eyebrow as he felt the power flowing through Neo. The Timeforcer's hair slowly turned white and stuck up on end, sparks drifting off the ends of it. When his eyes flashed open, they were glowing red.

A fireball appeared in the palm of Matrix's upraised hand, flowing off his fingers then shooting up into the air.

About fifty metres up, it seemed to hit an invisible wall, spreading itself out like an opening flower. As the others watched, Matrix began to unleash Destruction. Not destruction, which is simply a way of saying that things are a bit untidy. This was the Idea of Destruction, in it's most pure form.

This was the sort of thing that made the most evil Sith Lords look like saints.

As the energy flows around them began to break down, Angelo shifted from the material plane into the ether. From here, the changes going on were more obvious, and slightly easier to avoid. Warwick and the Reverend joined him, then, as the damage to the energy flows began to reverse itself, Matrix appeared beside them.

"Your turn."

Angelo nodded, and began to draw on his reserves. Already the Black Lands were starting to loose their form, as more and more power had to be thrown into resisting the encroaching Entropy.

As the power flowed through him, Angelo focused on the same point that Matrix had been focused on. Holding out a hand, he unleashed more Destruction. He had to admit that he was handling more power than he was used to, but it was nice to sense Matrix's surprise at the sheer amount of power that was being manipulated.

As Angelo felt Warwick get in behind him, pouring his own power into the assault, he saw the Reverend keeping one stable area open behind them; the Portal, their way out.

Angelo kept pouring more power into his attack, until he felt the last vestige of the Black Land's control slip away, leaving the Destruction unhindered in it's work.

As dimensional barriers began to break down, Angelo felt the four dimensional world vanish from around them. As the Black Lands quickly faded through to two dimensions though, Angelo saw something in, what might once have been, the distance.

Heat energy flows appeared, along with a few trace atmospheric elements. Both factors reacted together, generating something that would, in a four dimensional world, been fire. In amongst the blaze though…

"Zero!" Matrix wasn't exactly running in this world, but he was trying to move at a certain degree of speed towards the red armoured Reploid who had appeared in the middle of the fire. He was tumbling around, obviously unable to handle existence in just two dimensions.

Angelo took off as well, sensing that Warwick and the Reverend were staying behind.

Trying to Slice Time to speed himself up was hopeless right now, as were quite a few of the other tricks he knew for speeding himself up.

So he ran, easily managing to keep pace with Matrix, who was going flat out, but unable to move any faster himself. Around them the world had dissolved into flashing lines of light, random patches of colour that came and went, and, in the distance, an approaching darkness that marked the edge of the rapidly shrinking universe.

If this universe ends with us in it… We'll be dead for starters. Zero will stand even less chance of survival than us…

Reaching the stranded Reploid, Matrix and Angelo grabbed one of his arms each, both fighting against the momentum which caused their images to echo into the distance as if they hadn't stopped.

They started moving again, pushing as hard as they could against the resistance offered by two dimensional matter that was rapidly being reduced to one dimension around them. They continued to leave echoes behind them, echoes that tugged them back as they tried to outrun the end of the parasite universe.

As they reached the Portal, Angelo didn't stop to adjust himself back to three dimensions. Instead he plunged onwards, pulling Zero and Matrix with him.

As they fought their way through the Quantum Strings that lined the tunnel connecting the Portals, Angelo continued to push himself harder and faster, knowing that the Strings were only getting in their way because the tunnel was closing up. Already the end behind them had shut, and a tunnel through Multiverse barriers couldn't survive very long without two ends.

As the Strings began to get so tight that it was almost impossible to move, Angelo pushed himself out of the tunnel, and back into the Real World.

The Black Lands were destroyed. They could take it easy now.

Lightning continued to blaze away round the Portal as Kyle watched. The Reverend and Warwick had both appeared through the lightning a minute ago, and seemed unable to explain where the other pair were.

Suddenly Jack ducked, at the same time as the Reverend and Warwick dived out of the way.

Something that tore at your eyes, that bent light around itself then tied it in knots and spat it out again, shot out of the lightning an instant before it vanished.

Kyle turned quickly, trying to see whatever it was that had come out, but unable to manage to. It hung in mid-air, twisting the air around it into a vortex while light was bent into different shapes.

There was a brief pause for an instant as Kyle waited, then the thing unfolded itself, seeming to change in some strange way that Kyle couldn't explain. As he continued to watch, the thing became a badly distorted image, then a solid shape, then there was a twanging sound and Angelo, Matrix and Zero appeared in mid-air.

They hung there for an instant, before falling. Zero hit the ground and began groaning. Matrix hit the ground, then flipped himself up onto his feet. Angelo stopped half a metre above the ground, then levitated himself round till he was standing on his feet.

"That was incredible," Matrix said. "Drinks on me, guys."

The Timeforcer waved a hand, and the world faded from sight around them.

Chapter 12 – Short Interlude

Randolph smiled as he knocked the fluffy ball across the grass again, this time in the direction of the small lake fifty metres away.

The cat leapt and grabbed the ball between it's front paws as it flattened itself out across the grass. It's black fur rippled, reflecting the light in odd ways, as it moved. Not like a normal cat, who's coat was generally very dark brown, or something similar. This cat's coat was totally black. Every part of it was black in fact, except it's eyes.

The cat rolled onto it's side, batting the ball back in Randolph's direction. As it rolled it tinkled softly, as the bell inside it sounded.

Randolph picked up the ball and marvelled at it. It's surface was an odd mixture of pink, yellow and green cloth.

As he held the ball, the cat came over to him and rubbed itself against his legs, purring like a thunderstorm. He smiled down at it, and as it looked up at him, he got the impression that it was smiling back.

The thought crossed his mind that he wasn't sure how long he'd been here, playing with this cat. It seemed like ages since he'd been out with his brother's friends, suffering through their jokes and insults. They'd always made fun of the fact that he wasn't as intelligent as them. They joked about the fact that, though a year older than any of them, he couldn't tie his shoelaces, while they'd been able to for several years.

He smiled as he remembered how they'd found this cat, lying in the middle of the field next to this flat stone that was the right height for Randolph to use as a seat. It had been playing with this ball, until his brother had tried to take the ball away from it.

He frowned as he remembered one of his brother's friends throwing a stone at the cat when they'd been unable to get the ball away from it without being hissed at.

He wasn't sure where his brother had gone, or how long he'd been gone. What he could remember though was that this cat had been sitting there, and he'd been happy ever since.

He saw the cat looking at him again, and looked down at his hand. He frowned as he found he was holding a yo-yo. He'd seen them, and had seen people doing all sorts of tricks with them. He'd never been able to get the hang of them though. His frown deepened as he wondered where the ball had gone.

The cat purred softly, and as he looked at it, he felt his concern fade away. What does it matter, the cat's expression seemed to say. Just play with me.

Slipping the yo-yo's string loop round one finger, he let the yo-yo itself roll down to the end of the string, where it stopped.

The cat yowled happily as it knocked the yo-yo to one side with a paw and watched it swing back and forth.

Randolph's happy mood was broken, when six bolts of lightning suddenly burst out of the scant clouds that covered the sky. He gasped as each of them struck the ground in a three metre wide semi-circle with him at it's centre.

As the smoke of the super-heated dirt cleared, Randolph coughed a few times, then saw that six figures were standing around him.

Each of them was dressed in strange cloths; everything they wore was black, apart from various medallions, which were gold. Randolph cowered slightly as one of the figures moved a step towards him and seemed to examine him very closely.

"Randolph, still playing with the cat I see."

Confused, Randolph looked up at the person. The face was somehow familiar, the lines of it looked like something he'd seen before. Then he noticed a scar across the figure's chin. "Bradley?"

His brother, who now looked like he was closer to twenty than the seven that he had been when he'd tried to take the cat's ball, smiled nastily. "So you recognise me, huh? Then again, I'm not surprised it took you that long."

Randolph stood slowly. "You know mum said you're not to say things like that." Even to him, his voice sounded very uncertain. His brother couldn't have gotten that old so soon could he?

"Oh yeah," Bradley nodded, leering down on his older brother. "I haven't actually seen mum for years. Haven't had time. Though I suppose I should have made time. I am, after all, a Timeforcer. Or rather," he corrected himself, "a Mega-Timeforcer, which makes me several thousand times as strong as a normal Timeforcer." He looked down at his brother. "Bet you don't know what one of those is."

"I don't," Randolph admitted, trembling at the sudden strength his brother seemed to have.

"Well let's just say, that I'm looking forward to making the lives of everyone that ever slighted me, very difficult. And I and my friends thought that we might start with you and this little cat, as an easy target."

One of the others, that Randolph vaguely recognised as one of Bradley's old gang, stepped forward. "We'll start with the cat, so you know what we're going to do to you." He made a stopping gesture in Randolph's direction, and Randolph found himself unwilling to move.

The others grinned as they stepped forward. Before, they had been terrified of this cat, afraid to even come near it. Now they leered and didn't seem to care.

Randolph tried to pick the cat up and run away with it, despite knowing that his brother had been able to run faster than him even before he'd suddenly grown up. Even as he tried though, he found himself unable to move even to stand up and run away himself.

His gaze was fixed on the cat, unwaveringly stuck looking down on the creature that would probably be torn to pieces, or worse.

Vaguely Randolph remembered that his brother had once been allowed to keep the school's rabbits over a week's holiday. What had been returned to the school had been enough to scare most of the teachers and get Bradley expelled from the school altogether.

Now that he was older and seemed to be in some way, a lot nastier, there didn't seem to be anything that Bradley wouldn't do.

As Randolph sat there, unable to look away, the cat turned to look at him as the first hand reached down to it. Randolph noticed that there was a faint blue glow surrounding his arms and legs. The cat seemed to examine this, then looked up at his face.

Shaking with anguish and fear, but still stuck where he was, Randolph could do nothing but stare at the cat's face as it examined him. It's eyes, the only part of it that wasn't black, seemed to focus not on his face, but somewhere behind his head. He was sure this wasn't the case, but when the creature's eyes were not only totally green, without any black in them, but also glowing as if lit from behind, it was hard to tell.

The cat purred softly, and the glow intensified for a second. The blue glow across his body faded, and Randolph found he could move again.

Stay here. Just don't watch.

The thought arrived in his head as if he had thought it himself, but in some way, he was sure it had come from the cat.

As Bradley's hand was about to touch the cat's fur, Randolph put his head between his knees and covered it with his arms, eyes tight shut and with his arms covering his ears.

The next thing he heard, surprisingly, wasn't the sound of the cat screaming. What he heard, was a single note, starting high and descending rapidly. He wasn't sure how, but in some way he knew that this was the start of something bad about to happen nearby.

As the note almost got too low to here, there was a faint twang, like the noise Bradley used to make with a ruler on the edge of a desk, then silence.

Fearing the worst, Randolph looked up slowly.

Instead of a dismembered cat, which he had been expecting to see, Randolph found the cat sitting exactly where it had been before. Around them the grass was untouched by any signs that anyone else had been there. Bradley and his friends were gone. The only thing that was different was the large number of crystals that were lying round the area and a faint glow in the air.

Randolph picked up the nearest of the crystals, and looked carefully at it. The light hit it in odd ways, suggesting first one shape, then a different one. Colours seemed to filter through it almost magically, sometimes coming out white, other times coming out in the more pure colours he'd ever seen.

Beside him the cat purred. He looked down at it, and smiled, holding out the crystal in the palm of his hand for it to see. "Isn't it pretty?"

The cat seemed to consider, then stood and rubbed itself against his leg purring softly. After going round his legs, it sat down and looked up at him. For a few seconds he found himself unable to look away from the glowing green eyes that bored into his mind. He felt that he could be lost forever within that green glow that seemed to fill his vision for an eternity.

When he looked away, he was holding a fluffy ball that tinkled when it moved. The area was still full of crystals, but in some way, they'd lost their magic. Seeing this cat pleased with the ball would be more important than the crystals.

He frowned for an instant, wondering if someone else had been there. There was something about his brother and the old gang… But if there had been, then he couldn't remember now.

Smiling down at the cat, he tossed the ball across the grass, and almost laughed with joy as it jumped and grabbed the ball between it's front paws.

This is the life, thought Schwartz, as he grabbed the ball.

Chapter 13 – Gatecrashers

They were back at the restaurant again, with the slight difference that this time they had most of the building to themselves. Kyle wasn't sure what Neo had done, but when they'd arrived they'd apparently had the party there booked for several days.

It wasn't much of a party. Apparently Neo had already paid for a large part of the contents of the store room behind the bar, so they had pretty much free rein over what they had to drink and eat. This apparently included almost anything that was on the menu, delivered almost the instant they ordered it.

"Two questions," Kyle said as he chewed a piece of steak. "Firstly, we've got some kind of time loop thing here, so how did that get started, and how are these people getting our meals to us so fast?"

Neo chewed at some spaghetti for a few seconds, a thoughtful expression on his face. Eventually he nodded. "Basically it's the same theory for both situations. With regards to the whole thing about you lot being in this universe, I would have to say that in a moment of boredom I came into this universe, looking for something to do and ended up in the Black Lands by mistake.

"Now the first time round, you lot weren't here, but I obviously guessed that you would be able to help the situation out a bit, so sent the message back to you lot. At this point we jumped right into the paradox, because the future that I had sent the message from, no longer existed, so I never sent the message. Here's where it gets clever.

"To stop the multiverse from being dragged into such a paradox, that version of me altered things so that when I showed up, things would go in such a way as to force me into the same situation." Neo spun some more spaghetti round his fork. "It's kind of self-hurting, but then again it did prevent this universe from falling apart at the seams."

Kyle considered for a few minutes while they all continued to eat. "And the food?"

Neo shrugged. "I'm keeping a mental record of what everyone orders and when they do so I can go back to when I booked the restaurant and leave an order with them. I haven't technically ordered it yet, but try not to let that spoil your enjoyment of the food." As a demonstration, he twisted most of the spaghetti on his plate round his fork and swallowed it in one mouthful.

Kyle smiled as this happened, and cut more of his steak off.

As they carried on through the meal, Kyle suddenly noticed something strange. The staff were serving them all equally, and didn't seem to have noticed that one of their customers was a monkey, while another looked like he'd come straight off the set of some science fiction movie. "Just out of interest," he said when the staff had vanished for a while, "why doesn't anyone think you pair are unusual?"

The Reverend paused for a few seconds, then carried on eating. Warwick sniggered under his breath, then turned to Kyle. He was having to sit on the table as none of the chairs were tall enough for him.

To put it simply Kyle; no one will see anything they shouldn't unless we want them to.

Kyle considered this, then frowned. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Warwick shrugged, then clicked his fingers.

Unwillingly, Kyle blinked. When his eyes opened, he looked around at everyone that was sat at the table. Frowning, he wondered what he'd been talking about a few seconds ago. He couldn't actually see anything odd at the table. Everyone seemed to be human…

Neo was scowling at Warwick, who smiled weakly. Scowling, Neo frowned in concentration.

There was a second where everything seemed to twist a bit, then Kyle shook his head and everyone was back to normal, and he was left with just a memory of that strange feeling that nothing had been unusual about the situation.

"Nice trick." If he hadn't expected Warwick to do anything, he wouldn't even have looked round to see if anything was wrong. "Maybe you could teach me that some time."

Warwick threw him a look, then bared his teeth at Neo as the Timeforcer opened his mouth to speak. Don't.

Neo looked at Warwick out of the corner of his eye, then shrugged at Kyle.

Kyle frowned as he forked another piece of steak and eat it. "I wish you guy's wouldn't be so secretive all the time."

"You wish?" Neo looked across at Angelo as he spoke, causing Kyle to frown again. "These guys are keeping thinks from me as well."

Smiling at Neo's indignation, Kyle drained half his glass, then looked round at the Reverend again. "Just out of interest, do you actually have a name?"

The Reverend grinned at him, then swallowed another mouthful of food. "My own people have no use for names, most of them not even bothering to make the attempt to converse in any way. When I met up with the Interfacers I took a name of my own choosing. I prefer only to allow those that I class as friends to use it." He seemed to consider. "That name is Kholan."

Kyle considered, then nodded. As he reached for his glass again, the entire restaurant began to glow around them. It seemed to start out as a mixture of red, blue, orange and so forth, but in a second it intensified to the point that everything was a white blur.

As the glow faded a second later, Kyle saw that they were no longer in the restaurant. Instead it looked like they were in a wilderness similar to the Black Lands, but with a normal sky that was just beginning to show a couple of stars as it faded into twilight.

With the chairs no longer supporting them, all of them collapsed apart from Neo, Angelo, Kholan and Jack, all of whom regained their footing easily. Warwick suffered the most as the table vanished from beneath him and he dropped to the rocky ground beneath them.

"Hey, who cued the change in locale?" Neo was looking round as he spoke, as if trying to find something.

Yeah, Warwick agreed. This wasn't in my copy of the script.

"Then obviously you haven't read the revised edition," a voice stated from nearby.

All of them turned to look for the source of it, then all of them managed to look shocked when Harmen Solen stepped out from behind a boulder. Despite the surroundings, he was still wearing the same black suit that he'd been wearing the last time they'd met him. The only difference now seemed to be that before his expression had been one of mild amusement, whilst now it seemed set into a totally neutral mask. Apart from his eyes of course. If looks could kill, the look in his eyes would have hit them like a nuclear bomb.

"Harmen Solen," Angelo said slowly. "I should have guessed when I saw a piece of teleporter technology that wasn't native to this universe. I suppose by now you know that with the Black Lands gone, Terranew is just about totally done in."

"I know better than you do." As he spoke, something like a glowing wireframe image appeared in the air around Alpha. Zero swore softly as the lines came together and Alpha's armour appeared around him for an instant, before he and his armour faded from sight.

"Where'd he go," Neo asked sharply, looking around.

"Cloaking technology?" Kyle activated his own armour as he spoke, then running through a complete sensor scan of the area.

"We'd be able to sense him if it was," Angelo said. He and Jack had both pulled out their sunglasses and were looking around through them, presumably trying to locate the errant Reploid. The other Maverick Hunters had also activated their armours, though they seemed to be looking around with their eyes rather than sensors.

"He's gotta be around here somewhe," Neo began before suddenly cutting it off with a scream. His form seemed to ripple and various coloured lines of energy flowed around him.

Angelo swore violently, and launched a fireball in the direction of Neo, who was sent sprawling by the attack, but managed to get control of his form again.

As Neo picked himself up again, the Interfacers all began to move around, as if playing tag with an invisible opponent.

"What is it?" Kyle raised his X-Buster as he spoke and pulled his Z-Sabre into his other hand. "Where is he?"

Angelo suddenly blurred, then collapsed a couple of metres away, as the energy lines snagged around his legs for an instant. He rolled and jumped to his feet quickly. "He's jumped into Lower-Space! We all draw our powers via there! We can't hurt him without killing ourselves or our powers! Only good point is that when we leave, he won't be able to hurt you from there, so he'll come back into sight and you can shoot him!"

"You're leaving?"

"Don't have much choice Kyle," Neo said as his hair started to glow white. "We can't touch him, but he can kill us. It's up to you guys." He smiled apologetically, then all four of the super-beings blurred and took off in opposite directions.

Kyle looked around, horrified at the task before them. "This is not a good situation."

X spun round at the sound of Alpha chuckling behind him.

Now that he was standing still and X could get a good look at their opponent, X could see that it wasn't totally black. Along various edges it had red highlights, while some of the plating was a teal colour. The crystal on his forehead was the same blue triangle as Zero's, but seemed to be marginally larger, and had a smaller triangle coming out of each side. The rest of the helmet was also of a similar design to Zero's but seemed to be designed to look nastier. There was a gold disc embedded in it just above the crystal, while on either side of both of those, were smaller lumps, that didn't seem to serve any purpose.

As they stood watching each other, Alpha raised both of his forearms, and the familiar wireframe glow appeared around both of them, coming together to form something that looked like a black X-Buster on both of his arms. Unusually though, there seemed to be a second indent just out from the main weapon port that the Plasma Bolts came out of.

X pulled his Z-Sabre from the sheaf on his back at the same time that Zero did the same. The pair of them and Xtreme turned to face Alpha, activating their blades as they forming themselves into a line with Shades and Trigger tagging onto one end, and 84 onto the other. All of them held their weapons ready, though 84 seemed to be just as ready to run as to fight.

"Give it up Alpha," Zero said, striking an en-guard pose with his Z-Sabre. "It's six against one, which isn't good odds in any fight."

Alpha nodded slowly. "True. It is a bit unfair. Perhaps I won't move so fast to give you a chance."

Zero sneered for a second, before Alpha also smiled. A glowing, metre long, green blade, like a Z-Sabre, sprung into life from both of the unusual indents on Alpha's weapons, while as he raised his arms, a thirty centimetre long metallic looking blade shot out of each elbow, then began to move back and forth so fast that it became a solid blur.

"Oh shit," 84 said. "Those are Guyver vibra-blades." A look of horror crossed his face. "He's fused with a Guyver Control Metal."

X frowned, at the same time that Alpha's smile widened and he nodded.

All of them were slightly disconcerted by his attitude, and so were almost totally unprepared when Alpha leaned slightly forward, then Air-Dashed at them.

X, Zero and Xtreme all tried to swipe at him with their Sabres, at once. X's was deflected by Alpha's sabre, as was Xtreme's. Zero's took several dozen hits from what looked like Point-Defence Nano-Cannon shots, which just managed to deflect it enough that he missed and Alpha rugby tackled him.

The others spun round, trying to target the rapidly moving Reploid as the force of his run carried him and Zero almost ten metres through the air before they landed, rolling several more metres before coming to a struggling stop.

Trying to move faster than his motors would allow him to, X brought his X-Buster round and fired off a shot in the direction of Alpha's back.

Somehow the Reploid flipped himself and Zero over so that the shot caught Zero in the back, allowing Alpha to flip him over his head, then leap to his feet and fire off several shots rapidly at them.

X was flung into a boulder by the force of the shots. Ye gods. This guy has Medium Charge strength shots when he's in rapid fire mode.

Switching to his Giga-Crusher attack, X charged up to full, then unleashed the shot straight at Alpha.

The massive shot carried Alpha several metres through the air, then almost a metre into a boulder the size of a small hill.

All of them ceased fire, hoping that Alpha was at least badly damaged by the attack. They were not therefore happy, when he stepped out of the hole, apparently unhurt by the whole thing. He swayed slightly for a second, then looked sharply at X. "Maybe not." As he spoke the glow of upgrading systems surrounded Alpha for an instant.

As the glow faded, he had his head back, apparently staring up at the sky. Then with a suddenness that caught all of them off guard, he moved.

"YAA!" As he shouted, he punched forward with both his arms, unleashing a Giga-Crusher full charge shot from both of them. Both shots caught X full in the chest, phasing with each other so that the resultant shot was over twice as powerful as the two shots together should have been.

The shots carried X into the boulder again, then through the boulder as it shattered under the sudden heat of the massive plasma bolts. X could feel his external systems failing as the plasma burnt through his defences, tearing away at his motor functions and sensors. He almost wasn't able to sense as the blast landed him in a small lake.

External Armour Plating: 56% efficiency

Motor Functions: 76% efficiency

Tactile Sensors: Non-Operational

Radar Optics: 14% efficiency

Registering Dangerously Rapid Drop in Armour Temperature

External Armour Plating: 47% efficiency and Falling

Repair Systems Active…

Xtreme was flung aside by the shots as well, though being almost a dozen metres away from the focal point of the attack meant that it was only a metre or so.

Rolling to his feet, he fired at Alpha, using his Ice Shotgun. The freezing charges struck Alpha in the chest, forming into solid blocks that began to work their way round his joints, locking him in place.

As Xtreme continued to fire, the others ceased firing, probably hoping that freezing Alpha would be good enough to get rid of him. It certainly seemed to be. As Xtreme piled on the ice, the block that Alpha was encased in continued to grow, until it was the size of the boulder that X had been pushed through by the force of the Giga-Crusher shots.

At that point, X stopped firing and wearily lowered his X-Buster, reverting it back to it's normal form as he did. Resting his free hand on one knee, he lowered himself onto a rock. "That guy…"

'That guy,' apparently didn't want to stay in the ice. The entire block shattered as a continuous beam of plasma shot out of the top. Half of the block collapsed over to one side, while the other half nearly exploded outwards.

In the midst of the steam cloud that followed, there came the flash of Reploid armour being upgraded, then another, brighter glow. The glow grew, not in intensity, but in size, until it seemed to be coming from a source nearly ten metres tall.

As the glow faded they looked up, and wished they hadn't.

The form of Alpha that now towered over them looked something like a giant armoured gorilla. This gorilla had black armour, with red highlights. It's first pair of arms came down from it's shoulders, which were marginally higher than it's 'head', and ended on the ground. Beneath them a second pair of arms unfolded from the sides of it's body, both of which had something resembling Alpha's usual weapons on them.

The 'head' of this armour consisted merely of a flat plate with a pair of red dots in about the right place to be eyes. There glared up for an instant, then died away to a faint glow.

Xtreme took a step back and looked up at the new form of Alpha. As he did so, the armour raised one of it's larger arms, and pointed it in the general direction of Xtreme.

He leapt at the same time that the shot hit the ground where he'd been standing. The downdraft caused by the sudden freezing cold that his sensors detected beneath him nearly pulled him back down, but by Air-Dashing a couple of times, he managed to land several metres away from the ice that was piling up.

He looked round in time to see a trail of ice rushing across the floor towards him as Alpha swung his arm round. He leapt again, landing ten metres away. Still the ice came towards him, so he decided on a different tactic.

Air-Dashing vertically, he got on level with Alpha's head, then switched to horizontal and flew at him, Z-Sabre pointing forward, aiming to spear the giant form.

Zero apparently had the same idea, and also Dashed at Alpha, though aiming for his chest rather than his head.

They both hit at the same instant, Zero being deflected by some kind of energy discharge, while Xtreme drove his Z-Sabre up to the hilt into Alpha's armour.

As he tried to draw the Z-Sabre out or to one side, he heard something hit him with a sort of splat sound. Looking down, he saw that a number of what looked like black vines had sprung from Alpha's armour and were sticking to his legs.

As he watched, a small hole opened up in Alpha's armour and another vine sprung out and stuck to his leg. He suddenly realised that his legs were going numb.

"Shit! Fusion Technology!" Almost by instinct he brought his Z-Sabre round, slicing at the armour around his feet, trying to cut away at the vines that were beginning to pin him in place and were starting to come a lot faster.

Eventually he did the only thing he could. As his waist started to freeze up as Alpha gained control of his systems, he pointed his X-Buster down and prayed that the Fusion technology had a lower heat tolerance than his own armour. There was no point in hoping the same of Alpha's armour.

The Plasma bolt tore him free and dropped him to the ground nine metres below. He was slightly startled when, on the way, he was nearly hit by a couple more shots, as if the others were firing at him.

As he landed and rolled, Xtreme managed to get a proper look at the display from his tactical computer. Damn it they are firing at me!

"Stop trying to blow me away you idiots!" He Air-Dashed as fast as he could, twisting and firing wildly behind him as he did. In the process he barely managed to dodge another ice blast that Alpha fired in his direction.

Landing and trying to ignore the chill in his foot, which had developed a layer of frost, Xtreme activated his Giga-Crusher armour and launched a full charge shot at Alpha.

The giant armoured form didn't even seem to notice the shot for a few seconds, then turned it's head towards him.

Xtreme was knocked flat as red beams of light shot from both of Alpha's eyes and hit him in the chest.

External Armour Plating: 73% efficiency

Optical Sensors: 16% efficiency (forward)

Repair Systems Active…

Pushing himself to his feet again, Xtreme leapt into the air, managing to dodge the second shot by mere luck. As he landed, he found himself next to 84.

"Give me some cover fire," 84 yelled at him. "I've got an idea!"

Xtreme nodded, then was shocked when 84 suddenly deactivated his armour.

Jack rolled behind a boulder as he slid a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his Magnum again. As Xtreme kept a pattern of fire established along with the others, Jack did something to the gun, then suddenly jumped into the air, somersaulting as he did, then landed on top of the two metre high boulder.

The Magnum came round as he landed, aiming at Alpha's chest before he completed the jump. The gun bucked in his hand as he pulled the trigger, then bucked again as he fired off a second shot. The shots had happened so fast that it almost sounded like a machine gun.

Xtreme's tactical computer tracked the bullets as they passed through the air, both of them striking Alpha dead on.

Realistically, when a full charge Giga-Crusher shot didn't even phase him, a couple of bullets shouldn't have even worried Alpha.

Instead blue lightning seemed to crawl across the surface of the armour, leaving cracks as it did. Then larger cracks started to develop.

"Reploid killing ammo," Jack commented as he jumped down off the boulder. He held the gun ready as if not sure about whether the two shot's he'd fired would be enough. "Works very well against Boomers as well."

The crackle of the lightning was clearly audible as they stood there. Alpha seemed to be trying to scream, but that was always hard when your vocal processors were being shredded.

Jack had opened his mouth to say something else, when there came a noise like thunder, and the chest of the armour split right open. Something else in black armour leapt out of it and landed, on all fours, on the dirt.

Lightning continued to crawl over Alpha's original body for an instant, before red lightning took the place of the blue version. After a second even that vanished and Alpha stood up.

As he looked up, Xtreme was shocked to see his expression. The only time he'd seen that expression before, was in the few memories that he'd got from X when he'd first activated the MBAS. That time though, it had been Zero, pulling his head out of a concrete ceiling that it had just been pushed into. There had been that maniac grin and the look in his eyes that said that he'd been through hell, and was looking forward to taking them on the return trip.

It was the expression of a total psycho about to do major damage.

Trigger saw the expression on Alpha's face and had the nasty experience of remembering having that expression on his own face. Seeing something of yourself in someone else was never a nice experience. Seeing the worst parts of your life in an enemy who was obviously enjoying it as much as you had back then, was worse.

It was the expression of someone out to kill, without the slightest hint of mercy, simply because they felt like it.

But almost as suddenly as the expression had come, it vanished. It was almost as if Alpha's expression simply stopped being in one position and started being in a different one without moving between the two. What replaced the maniac pleasure of murder was something cold and calculating.

Before any of them could move, Alpha raised one of his weapons and fired off four shots at once. All of them dodged as despite Alpha having his weapon pointing straight up, all of the shots targeted one of them.

Trigger rolled sharply, ignoring the shards of rock that pinged off his back. As he stood he brought his left arm up, firing off a three second shot with his Shining Laser.

Alpha managed to dodge the worst of the shot and merely lost a bit of armour along one arm. Air-Dashing, Alpha avoided the follow-up and his upgrade systems cut in whilst he was still in mid-air. He landed and fired a continuous beam shot at the same time, the flame thrower style weapon exploding whatever it touched.

Trigger rolled under the beam rather than running away from it, then drew on his own super-Human strength as well as his armour's motors to allow him to jump into the air, diving down at Alpha fists first.

The black Reploid responded with a right hook that threw Trigger almost ten metres and landed him in an ungracious heap. As he flipped back onto his feet, he saw that Alpha was glowing as he changed armour.

The form that appeared seemed to be more streamline than Alpha's normal armour. Claws seemed to have been added to the hands, and the red highlights were gone.

Trigger brought his weapon up and was about to fire, when Alpha made a gesture in his direction.

Invasive Signal Detected: Function Unknown

"Adam!"

Trigger turned sharply, vaguely aware that the world around him had reduced to a blur except in one place. In the middle of this huge area, a Boomer had shown up. A rogue boomer out here? But that shout…

Katy Bonne, Trigger's girlfriend, was being held by in one of the Boomer's hands, while it's other hand was closing round her neck. Marks were visible on her body where her cloths had been torn away as if she'd been beaten.

"NO!" As the Boomer continued to move it's hand towards her neck, Trigger brought up his T-Buster and fired a dozen rapid fire shots at the Boomer.

"Will people please stop trying to shoot me?!" Trigger blinked and stumbled as Xtreme's voice cut through the vision of the Boomer and Katy. Suddenly he found himself pointing his weapon at Xtreme, who was looking very harassed beneath his helmet.

Invasive Signal Affecting Audio/ Visual Input Signals

It wasn't real, Trigger realised. Alpha was making me hallucinate.

As if to underline the point, Alpha suddenly hit Trigger with a rugby tackle, claws scraping across his armour and actually digging up to a centimetre into it in some places.

Trying to twist himself free, Trigger managed to dig the claws deeper into his own back and land awkwardly. He winced as his shoulder was jammed out of place by the impact, then he pushed hard with his knees, flipping Alpha over his head.

Claws raked along his sides as Alpha tried to keep a grip on him, tearing deep gouges in his armour, and damaging a few of his systems.

External Armour Plating: 37% efficiency

Internal System Control/ Response Lines: 86% efficiency

Critical Damage to Shining Laser: Unable to Fire

Repair Systems: 84% efficiency

Repair Systems Active…

Trigger tried to push himself to his feet, desperately hoping that his systems would reroute themselves soon. Moving when a quarter of your armour's control lines were severed wasn't impossible, but could be difficult to start with until the internal systems sorted themselves out.

As he tried to stand, Alpha recovered from being thrown, and spun round, planting a medium charge shot in his chest and flinging him back against a boulder.

He almost screamed as the plasma leaked in through the cracks in his armour, frying some of his internal systems, damaging others. The cuts across his back widened from the impact and his diagnostic display flickered in the middle of trying to update him on his status.

Then it flickered again and a message came up that he'd never seen before, and couldn't understand.

Tactical Computer Predicts Critical Damage Immanent

Switching to T2 Armour…

The world went white.

T2 stood up unsteadily, trying to sort through reports from systems that hadn't existed seconds before. He ran through them, marvelling at the suddenly increased speed of his processing power in this new form.

External Armour Plating: 100%

A-G Flight System: 100% efficiency

T-Cannon: 100% efficiency

Turbo-Laser: 100% efficiency

Repair Systems: 100% efficiency

Internal Systems: 100% efficiency

As he stood, from where he'd collapsed in front of the boulder, T2 tried to smile, and discovered that his face had gone.

In it's place was merely a blank plate beaten into the crude form of a robot's face.

Well I wasn't totally Human to begin with, he thought to himself. Looking around, he tried to find Alpha. Then he looked down at himself and his surroundings.

He was four metres tall.

Zero had kept up a steady rate of fire against Alpha more of less constantly throughout the entire battle. He'd been so involved in merely laying down fire, that he'd barely noticed the misadventures of the others.

Throughout the entire battle though, he'd been fighting against some else though. All the time he'd been able to avoid Alpha's shots because of this strange link that the pair of them had, which was probably explained by them being designed as counterparts (Zero found himself unable to call Alpha a 'brother').

But something else seemed to come along the link. Once Shades had almost landed in the way of his line of fire and his Z-Buster had jerked round to target him instinctively. He'd just managed to wrench it away before shooting a hole in Shades' back, but had been disturbed. It was more than tactical data that came over from Alpha.

It was his thoughts.

His own surprise had been mingled with Alpha's when Trigger suddenly glowed, as if changing armour.

That's nuts, he thought, not caring that Alpha heard every bit of it. Trigger can't change armour any more than he can teleport.

When Trigger suddenly doubled in size, scaled up rather than merely becoming fatter, Zero had almost tripped over his own feet.

As the new form of Trigger got unsteadily to his feet, Zero found himself most startled by the face. He'd seen more expression of feeling in a tin of beans. This face though just seemed to exist so that you knew where to aim your voice.

As Trigger stood, he looked around, then looked down, then aimed what looked like a T-Buster the size of a cannon at Alpha and fired.

Alpha was flung into the air by the blast, tumbled skyward for a second, then changed armour in mid-air. As the glow faded around him, Alpha suddenly accelerated horizontally, flying away from Trigger, then coming round in a tight loop and rushing at Trigger's head, A-Sabres extended forward, a pair of vestigial wings stuck on the back of his armour like some kind of joke.

Trigger tried to swat Alpha away, and mere ended up nearly slicing his wrist to pieces rather than having his face melted. There wasn't a trace of emotion though, not the slightest hint of pain, in Trigger's response, which was to try and grab Alpha out of the air.

Alpha didn't seem to agree with this move though, and as Trigger's hand was closing around him, he spun rapidly, arms extended so that both his A-Sabres and Vibra-Blades were cutting into Trigger.

Raising his Z-Buster, Zero took a shot at Alpha, marvelling at the fact that Alpha had survived this long. If he himself had been up against the six of them, then he'd have been cut to shreds within a minute or so. Alpha had been keeping going solidly for several minutes now and had withstood everything that they could throw at him.

As Alpha landed, Zero registered through their link that a new weapon was about to be unleashed.

He opened his mouth to yell a warning, then didn't even get a chance to start before Trigger was struck by half a dozen bolts of lightning.

The kid was stuck rigid for an instant, then shuddered, shakily raised his T-Cannon, and fired a shot at Alpha.

Alpha was already airborne though so the shot went wild. As Trigger staggered to reassert himself, he looked up at Alpha, took a step forward, then leapt into the air.

Alpha hit him with a double plasma bolt at the same time as he left the ground. This however didn't stop Trigger, who carried on rising into the air.

Zero frowned, then caught a glimpse of one of Alpha's sensor reports.

An A-G Field. That's how he's flying.

Trigger managed to rugby tackle Alpha in mid-air, angling down as he did so that they rammed, at speed, into the ground.

As the clouds of dust began to kick up so much that they almost obscured Zero's Radar Optics, he heard a groan from nearby.

Looking round, he spotted X climbing to his feet, out of armour and bleeding badly from various cuts and bruises.

"X, what happened?"

"In case you didn't notice," X said, "Alpha hit me with a couple of Giga-Crusher shots." He staggered up to a boulder and leaned against it. "This guy might be too much for us."

"I know," Zero replied. "His armour started off several times more powerful than ours, and he's got some very advanced armour program software running to upgrade him. He managed to develop a Giga-Crusher program for himself only a few seconds after you hit him with one."

WAZ-A: Zero, why are you helping these people?

Zero looked round sharply, just in time to see Alpha hit Trigger with a massive attack that flung the kid through the air, landing him almost twenty metres away from where he'd been standing.

"Better armour up," he said to X, drawing his Z-Sabre again.

"I can't," X said. "Rapid heating when he hit me followed by the rapid cooling from that lake," he gestured to the still steaming water behind him, "ruined my armour. I've got hairline fractures to over ninety percent of it and major ones to the other ten percent. I'll need at least a couple of days just to mend those, without worrying about my systems as well."

Zero looked horrified. Accessing Alpha's diagnostic capabilities, he saw that his counterpart was down to about ninety percent armour efficiency. "Give us any help you can, or stick out of the way," Zero told X. "Alpha's not going down any time soon."

"How do you know," X said, looking hard at Zero's expression.

"Don't ask," Zero said before turning away and taking a running leap at Alpha.

Shades twisted his Proto-shield round to deflect Alpha's shot just in time.

He'd been trying to actually hit Alpha for several minutes now, not getting very far for the most part. Alpha didn't seem to consider him much of a threat compared to the others, and even when he scored a direct hit on Alpha's back, all he got was a couple of shots from a Point-Defence cannon.

Feeling that more was needed in the way of action, he activated an armour program that he'd been working on for a while. It wouldn't work for anyone else of course, but that wasn't too much of a problem all things considered.

Bringing his Proto-shield round in front of himself, he felt his armour rebuild itself around him.

It wasn't elegant he admitted to himself as he powered up his weapons. But then again, not being good looking seemed to be working well for Alpha.

A massive Proto-shield was fused to both of his forearms. The jagged inner edges of them would lock together to form one massive shield, while when apart he had access to two X-Busters, both with slightly more power than usual.

As Alpha dodged another shot from Trigger, Shades locked both his shields together, leaned forward, and launched himself at Alpha, kicking his enhanced Dash capabilities into play as he did.

When he hit Alpha, it was at great speed, shield first.

Shades registered that Alpha was trying to shred him with his A-Sabres, but that his shield was protecting him. Even so…

This thing's supposed to be invulnerable, he thought sourly. So how come Alpha can scratch it?

As he and Alpha ploughed through several boulders, Shades began to notice something else about Alpha's capabilities that he hadn't banked on.

He's trying to Fuse with my shield!

Giving the shield one last kick, Shades disconnected himself from it, flipping over backwards and landing running. He skidded to a halt as Alpha pulled himself free of the boulder that he'd ended up stuck in.

Bits of red Proto-shield were stuck to Alpha, mixing oddly with the black and teal armour, covering up the few dents that the Xtreme team had made. Apart from that though, Alpha himself didn't seem to be the worse for wear, despite the ordeal with the boulders that he'd just passed through.

"Nice trick," Alpha said, a faint grin starting up. "I've got a few myself." On his forehead, one of the four indents that surrounded his crystal and the metal disc began to glow green.

Shades hardly had time to consider what might be happening before a green bolt shot from the indent and struck his leg.

Despite the thickened leg armour to accommodate the enhanced Dash technology, Shades still felt the shot affecting some of his internal components. Wincing, he looked down and saw that a hole had been burnt in his armour, exposing the inner circuitry. It was a nasty reminder of the fact that right now, he was more a machine than a man.

There was a barely audible whining sound, and Shades looked up in time to see the other three indents light up.

As they lit up, Alpha grinned at him.

Shades Air-Dashed as fast as he could, making full use of his enhanced capabilities as he did, barely avoiding more green bolts that shot at him like machine gun fire.

Flipping round in mid-air, he fired several shots down at Alpha, at the same time Dashing horizontally.

Green bolts followed him across the sky like tracer fire, nearly catching him when he didn't accelerate fast enough.

The others seemed to realise what was happening though, and Trigger laid down some cover fire for him, his own shots doing little more than irritating Alpha by comparison.

As he landed, rolling fast, Trigger turned and tried to locate Alpha again, praying that he wasn't being targeted.

Alpha though, seemed to have lost interest in him again, and was again taking his anger out on Trigger, who was taking it while firing back without a pause. Massive plasma bolts shot back and forth, so that it looked like the rest of them were only providing background noise.

Feeling that more was needed, Shades aimed, not for Alpha, but for the rocks next to him, bringing up huge clouds of shards with each shot.

Apparently infuriated again, Alpha turned, and the indents glowed again.

This time, as the shots rained down on him, he didn't have time to dodge.

84 watched in near horror as Alpha unleashed his Head-laser against Shades. Hoping that he wasn't so late that Shades would be beyond help, 84 unleashed a Heavy Charge shot at Alpha, sending him reeling.

Leaping and dodging, 84 made his way over to Alpha, activating his Geiram Armour as he went. Once he got to the right sort of range, he stopped behind a boulder for an instant, then spun round the boulder, aimed for Alpha's chest, and fired.

The gravity well charge struck Alpha dead on, fighting to implode him.

As it did though, 84 perceived through the distorted view that there was something fighting back. A calm pool of normal gravity had formed around Alpha, protecting him.

As the effect of the charge cleared, 84 raised his E-Buster and fired a series of rapid shots at Alpha, who didn't even bother to deflect them, but instead chose to bring out his own gravity well weapon.

84 ducked as the gravity well charge, enhanced by the Guyver technology within Alpha, shot over his head. As he raised his head though, his tactical computer told him what it had hit.

Trigger's waist had almost imploded. One of his legs was missing apart from the foot, which was lying nearby, while the other was only connected by a small amount of armour. He had collapsed and, while he would probably survive, wouldn't be back in the fight any time soon.

Leaping high, 84 managed to dodge the next shot, switching to his Biker Armour and bringing out his Lo.R.E. so that he landed astride it as he descended.

Powering it forward, he got a reasonable distance from the battleground, then turned sharply and rocketed back, firing off SMART missiles as he went.

Alpha took out several of them with Point-Defence cannons, then leapt skyward and fired several shots at 84 with his A-Buster.

84 jumped out of the seat, sending the Lo.R.E. back into storage as he did, and activating his Dragon Armour.

He and Alpha met in mid-air, Point-Defence cannons trying to take each other out, while Xtreme and Zero kept up a steady rate of fire from below.

84 brought his Time Shear Blades round, slicing through Alpha's Vibra-blades and reducing them to stumps. Alpha didn't even seem to feel it, but backed off several metres, then looked down at his elbows.

The whir of the Vibra-blades ended as the stumps came to a stop, then the stumps re-grew, coming back up to their full length. Alpha looked up and grinned nastily, just before Zero landed a Z-Buster shot between his legs.

Alpha managed to look mildly offended, then fired a Heavy Charge shot in the direction of the pair of them on the ground, at the same time that 84 hit him with a Continuous Beam shot.

Alpha reeled, then make a casting gesture towards 84.

Not wanting to be put through the same stuff that Trigger was, 84 moved quick, but wasn't quite prepared for the attack.

Lightning bolts rained down over a ten metre area, accompanied by fireballs, a mini-tornado, hail and a solid wall of water two metre thick. Though he avoided the worst of the lightning, the combination of the others was enough to force 84 into the ground hard enough to damage his armour and knock him out.

Xtreme grimaced as 84 was forced into the ground by the attack Alpha had used.

Ensuring that he could move in case of such an attack, Xtreme turned his attention back to Alpha.

Alpha it seemed, had tired of messing around in the air, and now came down to land, returning to his original armour and activating both of his A-Sabres.

The three squared off, all bearing glowing Sabres. Alpha's pair of sabres were still coming from his wrist rather than being held in his hand, while the Vibra-blades buzzed away at his elbows.

Zero and Xtreme still only had their own sabres, without any tricks to back them up in Xtreme's case, and with a few techniques in Zero's.

"Give it up," Zero called to Alpha. "Your armour's nearly on critical damage right now."

"And in the time it's taken you six to get me almost to critical damage, I've taken out four of you," Alpha replied. "I was always meant to be a better fighter than you Zero. I liked the odds when I brought you all here, and I like them just as much now." His grin widened. "Now let's see what tricks you know."

Alpha jammed the points of his Sabres together, starting a noise like a whirlwind and a light like an arc-welder where the blades met.

As flames started to spiral round the blades, Alpha spun to his right, bringing the blades round in a tight circle and trailing plasma as he went.

As he came round though, he broke the blades apart, skimming one of them along the surface of the other, forcing the ball of plasma he'd created towards the pair of them.

Xtreme barely had time to realise what was happening, but Zero reacted as if he and Alpha had planned the whole thing, holding out his sabre so that the ball of plasma struck it point first, worked itself half way down the blade, slowing as it went.

Zero stood rigidly, as if straining to hold the Sabre steady. As the strain almost seemed to become too much for him, the plasma ball began to move backwards, then shot off the end of the blade towards Alpha.

Alpha grinned as he did the same trick, with the difference that he caught the ball on both blades, then split the blades apart with half of it on each. He barely seemed to strain as he held his blades steady, then, in a sudden motion, drove both of them into the ground, angling it almost diagonally towards Zero.

Zero tried to mirror the move, driving his own sabre into the ground an instant later. Xtreme watched with part interest and part horror, as the energy from the attack flowed through the ground, tearing the rocks apart as it went, then flowed up Zero's Z-Sabre.

Zero took a step back, as if pushed by a powerful force, then pushed sharply back, forcing the attack back into the ground.

Alpha leapt into the air, clearing the shockwave easily, then moved fast enough that his sabres became almost a continuous blur in the air as Xtreme leapt at him.

Their blades met in mid-air, Xtreme suddenly realising how precarious his position had become. Alpha had twice as many blades, not to mention the other ones at his elbows. Xtreme found himself suddenly having to move twice as fast as usual, against an opponent who had just managed to take out four of them.

As the pair of them fell, Xtreme kicked out, Air-Dashing as he did, so that he landed next to Zero again. As he turned, he found Alpha had unleashed another attack with his Sabres already.

The shockwave whipped the ground out from beneath his feet like a rug. As he fell onto his back the follow-up attack struck, causing lightning to crawl across his armour as he was pounded by rocks.

Crawling to his feet, Xtreme looked round for Alpha, and found that he was battling Zero.

Unlike his own Sabre fight with Alpha though, Zero's was going better. Too well in fact.

It's almost as if they both know what the other's going to do before they actually do it.

Realising that Alpha seemed to have this advantage as well as Zero, Xtreme hoped that it wouldn't hinder him. Here goes nothing.

Activating his Z-Sabre again, he took a run at Alpha, and found his attack blocked without Alpha even looking round.

Twisting sharply to avoid the counter-strike, Xtreme pushed his Sabre sharply forward, just managing to clip Alpha's shoulder plating, then nearly loosing his kneecap to Alpha's Vibra-blade.

Like a trio of Jedi they made their way across the rocks, bringing out strike and counter-strike, not to mention the occasional special attack. Xtreme nearly lost his feet to some kind of firewall attack, while Zero managed to avoid or deflect everything that came at him.

Alpha also managed to avoid everything and despite taking on two of them at once was winning in a very major way. Apart from the slight scratch across one shoulder, he hadn't taken any damage from the Sabre fighting.

After several minutes of thrusts and parries, Alpha managed to plant his foot in Xtreme's waist area and pushed him to the ground. As he collapsed, Xtreme found Alpha moving faster than before, until the pair of them came to rest with Alpha kneeling next to Xtreme, an A-Sabre up against his throat and one across his chest.

"Keep back brother," Alpha called to Zero. "Or I'll have him dead before you can move a metre."

Xtreme twisted his head carefully round so that he could see Zero take a step back.

"If you harm him Alpha…"

Alpha grinned. He was breathing hard, as if he'd been working out. But Reploids don't need to breath, Xtreme thought to himself. So Alpha's systems must be going wrong, which is probably a sign of damage.

As he knelt there, Alpha opened his mouth to say something, then was flung back as the sound of a small explosion ripped through the air. Something struck Alpha's shoulder flinging him back, and giving Xtreme enough room to get up.

As he stood, Xtreme spotted Jack, out of armour, and with the Magnum in his hand again. The end was smoking, and Jack seemed to be a bit unsteady on his feet, but the gun was steady.

Turning to look at Alpha, Xtreme was shocked by what was happening. Lightning was crawling across his armour, while cracks opened up. The lightning only lasted for a few seconds, but when Alpha got unsteadily to his feet, he seemed to be genuinely in pain.

"Nice shot Tomlinson," he muttered. "Not good enough though."

Alpha suddenly dived behind a rock, a charging sound piercing the air as he did. Zero and Xtreme were already moving after him, whilst Jack reactivated his armour.

But even as Xtreme got in sight round the boulder, Alpha fired off a gravity well charge and opened a Multiversal portal, leaping through it even as Xtreme raised his X-Buster.

Behind them 84 swore, then began charging his own weapon. "Come on," he yelled at them, before firing off a gravity well charge and leaping through his own portal.

"Wait!" Xtreme shouted an instant too late, and his voice was still echoing round when 84's portal closed.

"Where's he go," Zero asked, coming back round the boulder.

"He jumped into a different universe," Xtreme explained, deactivating his armour. "He must have been able to track Alpha's course and follow him."

"Can't we do that?"

Kyle shook his head, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "We can't, for several reasons. Firstly I don't know how. With a laboratory worth of gear I might be able to figure it out, but not here and now. Secondly, we've got other things to deal with."

He looked round the battleground, with it's potholes that still glowed from where shots of gone off course. Shades was lying where he'd fallen, though X was taking a look at him. Trigger though was still in his new armour, and still missing a leg and parts of his waist.

"You go and help Shades, I'll take a look at Trigger." Xtreme set off at a run as he spoke, praying that the kid wouldn't be so damaged that he was beyond help.

As he approached though, Trigger began to glow, and shrunk down to his normal size. His leg came back into existence, and he seemed to be in perfect health apart from being unconscious. As Kyle knelt next to him, his armour faded from sight as well.

"Adam?" Kyle poked at the kid's shoulder, then reached under his chin and felt for a pulse on his neck.

This technique had the usual strangulation effect that it produces in many people, and Adam started to cough. His hand came up and moved Kyle's arm away, while he coughed again and shook his head. "What hit me?"

"Alpha got you with a gravity well charge," Kyle explained. "I don't know what that new armour you had active was, but it certainly gave Alpha a run for his money."

Adam frowned at Kyle, then coughed again. "What armour? The last thing I remember is Alpha trying to shred me with some claws, then hitting me with a Medium Charge shot. I think I got some kind of message from my tactical systems… Then I woke up with you doing a stranglehold on me."

Kyle frowned, then turned sharply as Zero yelled his name. X was kneeling next to Shades, and from what Kyle could see, looked frantic.

Setting off at a run, Kyle leapt from boulder to rock until he reached his brother. "How is he?"

X shook his head. "Too many internal systems were damaged by that attack of Alpha's. I can't even activate his MBAS to get him back into his Human form, though at least then I'd be able to save him. I'd say he's got about a minute, no more."

Kyle knelt next to his brother, real fear in his heart as he looked over the red armoured figure, unable to help him.

"Oh Kieran…"

Chapter 14 – The Way Back (in more ways than one)

As Adam ran across to join them, there was a crack of thunder, and a lightning bolt hit the ground nearby. Smaller bolts danced over all of them, growing brighter until the entire area was blanketed by flashes and crackling sounds.

Kyle looked round, startled that he couldn't even feel the lightning, and praying that this wasn't some kind of follow-up attack from Alpha. With only Shades in his armour, and the armour in a very bad shape at that, none of them would stand a chance.

When the armour cleared though, Kyle was pleasantly surprised to see Neo Paradox standing next to them, and the damage to Shades' armour repaired.

"Neo!"

"Hey Kyle, did you think I'd forget you?"

"Never mind that now," Zero said sharply. "We've got to go after Alpha."

Neo shook his head and laid a restraining hand on Zero's shoulder. "According to the Interfacers, you don't need to worry about him, or Jack, for a while. Just head back to your own universe and get back to your lives."

Kyle nodded understandingly, then looked sideways at Neo. "I don't suppose…"

"I bet you don't," Neo interrupted sarcastically.

"…That you could send us back in time to a few seconds after we left our universe? I mean, we did leave Linna in a bit of trouble when we left." He tried a hopeful smile, just in case.

Neo looked at him, tight lipped, with his arms folded, his entire stance suggesting that Kyle was daft for even suggesting it. Then a grin split his face. "Of course I can. Armour up boys!"

Shades, apparently unconcerned by his near-death experience, leapt to his feet, while the rest of them activated their own fully repaired armours.

Neo grinned, then made a dramatic gesture. There was a thunderclap, then…

Linna Yamazaki looked on in horror as Kyle and the others vanished, leaving her to face the Combat Boomers alone. Flying straight up, she aimed a knuckle bomber at one of the Boomers, while directing the mono-molecular ribbons towards one of the others.

One of the Boomers aimed a swipe at her and caught her across the shoulder, knocking her off course. What surprised her though, was what came next.

"Don't you punch my girlfriend!"

A plasma bolt hit the Boomer that had punched her, knocking it to one side. At the same time Zero cannoned into one of the others, Z-Sabre spinning madly, hacking it to pieces with an ease that startled her.

The others also joined in, slicing up three Boomers that would have taken almost ten minutes work yesterday in a matter of seconds.

As the last piece of Boomer landed, Linna looked suspiciously at Kyle, who had deactivated his armour and was grinning at her.

"You ran off without me," she said accusingly.

He shrugged. "You stopped charging the generator. Anyway, we're back now, problem solved."

She blinked. "You've been away for a couple of seconds!"

Kyle shook his head. "Nah, we just got Neo Paradox to send us back in time a bit so that we could come and save you."

"Oh, so you saved him then. Was he in trouble?"

Oddly the entire group of Reploids were silent and looked shifty. "Well?"

Kyle was the first to speak. "We'll explain the whole thing over dinner, this evening."

Sylia Stingray leaned back and looked carefully at Kyle Reeves as he finished his description of their recent adventure. If he was to be believed the Reploids had spent several days away, then returned home, literally, in time for a late breakfast the same day that they set off.

"So where's Neo?" She'd assembled a list of questions as the story went on and was reasonably determined to get through it before they all vanished off to bed. Apparently all of them had jet-lag.

Kyle shrugged. "I can only presume that he decided not to come over here himself for some reason. Maybe he met up with that Psycho guy again, though thankfully they should be on more even terms now."

"And the Interfacers?"

Kyle opened his mouth to reply, then looked at something over her shoulder. Turning, she saw that a small grey furred monkey in a brown coat and a black top hat was sitting on the backrest of the sofa, watching them all.

"Ahh, isn't it cute," Nene said as she stood and walked over to it. Sylia noticed, even if no one else did, that Zero stuck his wrist in his mouth and seemed to be trying not to laugh. All the others were looking like they were about to burst out laughing.

Nene walked over to the monkey and scratched it under the chin. "Isn't it a cute monkey?"

The monkey in question sat there for a few seconds, then leaned forward slightly and said, in a voice that was heard via the hairs on the back of your neck, Boo.

Nene gave a small scream and ran to hide behind Priss. All of the Reploids started laughing, along with Priss. Sylia herself smiled at Nene's discomfort, then looked more closely at the monkey, which had pulled out a monocle and fitted it over it's right eye.

"And you must be Warwick," Priss said once she'd calmed down a bit. "Nice to meet you."

Nice to meet you too, Warwick replied.

"Yeah," Kyle said, standing. "I suppose some introductions are due. Warwick, this is Sylia Stingray, head of the Knight Sabres, Linna Yamazaki, Priss Asigiri, Sylvie, Anri, and the blushing beauty is Nene Romanova."

All of them said hi in turn, though Nene's was decidedly embarrassed and she continued to hide behind Priss.

"Where did you guys go," Kieran asked, as if he talked to monkeys every day.

After Alpha showed up and did his stuff, we all scattered, far and wide. I understand that Neo came and made sure you lot got back here. I popped off to see one of my old friends, Angelo vanished off after something or other and Kholan went back to Del'Cartion for something.

"Del'Cartion?"

Warwick shrugged. Don't ask. You'll never get a satisfactory answer.

Kyle grinned. "Is that the thing that Neo was going on about? You know, that thing about you not telling him stuff."

Warwick glared at him, then cocked his head as if listening to something. Sorry to leave you like this, but I've got to dash.

"Could I just ask," Kyle put in quickly, "Neo said not to worry about Jack or Alpha. Will we be hearing from them again?"

Warwick gave him a beady look, then shrugged. Only time will tell. With a final toothy grin, Warwick did a back-flip into the air, spun round, and faded from sight before he hit the ground.

"That guy's incredible," Zero said calmly as Nene sidled round to her seat again.

"Play's the drums amazingly as well," Kieran agreed, grinning like a maniac.

"I bet he does," Priss said thoughtfully. "Maybe I could hire him as a drummer."

Kieran looked round at her. "If you needed a drummer why not ask me?"

"Cos I only just found out that you played one," Priss said evilly. "I didn't even know you played an instrument."

Kyle frowned for a minute, and seemed to be lost in thought. Then he clicked his fingers. "Of course! It was the alternate versions of you lot that we owned up to!" He suddenly looked shifty. "And we're going to have to own up again aren't we?"

Linna leaned closer to him, grinned nastily. "What exactly are we going to have to get you drunk to make you own up to?"

Kyle looked carefully at her. "Ask me when I'm drunk."

The End

The Adventures of the Xtreme Team Continue in

The Sequel

Coming soon!