Summary: The crew of the Andromeda is in deadly danger. From what? They don't know. They don't even know they're actually in danger. But there is a small group of people who do. A gang of wild, gutsy, renegade time-travelling teenagers and a certain Android, who have seen it all before, and they're not about to let it happen again.

A/N: Okay, so this idea has been kicking around in my head and evolving slowly for about a year now. It started because I wanted to do something that involved making up kids for the Andromeda crew, with all the problems this curtailed. I'd been writing fic for a while and wanted a go at making up my own original characters, if only to see if I could do it properly. Anyway, I made up kids, and wrote about them and stuff, but I just wasn't happy with the way things were going. Also, my 'shipper opinions had changed over the space of time between when I started writing and the present. So, I re-did it a lot, and wrote a lot more, and this... is what happened. Bare in mind it is the first OC fic I've dubbed good enough to post, so be nice to me. :)

Disclaimer: Khayos, Destiny, Hope, Hannah, Shailen and Trident are all my porperty. The other's are not, I'm not making any money, and I don't actually have any money, so don't sue me!

Part One

Chapter One: Of Khayos, Hope and Destiny

Once I asked the universe to dinner,
When she failed to yield to Earth's demands,
'Oh,' she said, 'you tiny little ant form,
I'm alright, dear,
I've got other plans.'

And we're sad because we think we don't belong here,
We're guilty 'cause we think we should be scarred,
Floating in a navy soup, we're sailing,
There you are, there you are.

Khayos slouched low in his chair, in the cockpit of the Maru, his blue eyes dutifully scanning the various read-outs coming up as the old computer monitored its surroundings. His thick, dark fringe fell into his vision as he leaned forward, and he brushed it back with clumsy, tired fingers, irritated at the distraction.

"Anything?"

Behind him, Destiny had appeared, as neat and immaculate as ever, coppery ringlet's clipped behind her ears, clothes, though old, well suited to her slight frame. Khayos envied his siblings their well-proportioned bodies, their lack of spots or anything that anyone would associate with the pains of puberty. But he couldn't dislike his younger sister for it. He loved her, after all.

"Nothing," the seventeen year old sighed and ran a hand through his wayward hair. His torn, blue and white shirt hung unchecked out of his faded overalls. "Not yet, anyway."

She smiled, dark brown eyes, so similar to their mother's, lighting up. "Can you feel it coming, Kay?" She rubbed at her arms and shifted from foot to foot, excitement welling in her feline expression, "I can. Closer all the time."

Khayos shrugged. He felt it slightly, of course. A vague pressure on the edge of his consciousness, a sense of some impending event. It was a lot less, he knew, than what Destiny and Hope would feel. For they were all their mother's blood. He had the curse of his father's heritage hanging over him, nothing more than a bane as he struggled to be important in their little band of renegade time-travellers.

"Soon the nearing vortex…" he quoted, softly.

"Well don't sound too enthusiastic about it," Destiny rolled her eyes. "We have a chance to save everything, Kay! A chance to take back what was stolen from us, a chance to see mother again! Why aren't you excited?"

"It's not just mother we're going to encounter there," Khayos pointed out. But it was different for her. She had only one parent, after all. Only mother. No second genetic donor to worry about accidentally stumbling across. No anger and pain and confusion to confront in the form of a human father.

Destiny touched his shoulder gently, knowing from experience what would be passing through her elder brother's mind. "You don't have to tell him, when we see him. He needn't think you're anything but pure-blooded star-avatar."

Khayos snorted. "Like anyone would believe that."

"Well you don't exactly look overly human now, do you?" Destiny folded her arms. "I'm no expert on homo-sapien physiology, but I'm pretty sure that they don't come in shades of blue. Or with tales, for that matter."

"Yes but come on, Dessi, look at me!" Khayos leapt up onto his seat and spread his arms wide for judgement, "I couldn't possibly be deliberate! There is nothing I could be but a scrambled, random assortment of genes! Anyone will be able to guess I'm a half-blood! Besides," he sank back into his chair once more, looking as morose as ever, "I have his eyes."

Destiny regarded her elder brother for a few seconds, one eyebrow raised. There was little but a year between them, yet sometimes it seemed so much more. Sometimes she felt herself a millennia younger than he was. Sometimes the other way round.

She could not deny his logic, however. There was no way he could have been 'formed'; drawn from the essence of another, moulded and created right out of his parent's minds, as she and Hope had been. Khayos was a growing, organic being, in a way she could never be. His body was awkwardly shaped; too long, and he moved in it uneasily, as if he had somehow yet to grow into it. His arms and legs were longer than he seemed able to cope with, making him clumsy and uncoordinated. Thick, dark hair which refused to submit to any form of taming hung in rebellious waves around his ears, while those bright blue eyes, that could never have come from their mother's side of the family, watched the world with a nervous, almost accusatory gaze.

Khayos was right. They would be going in on the vague hope that the past Andromeda crew would be too unfamiliar with the way Star-Avatars developed for them to realise he was a polar opposite to everything they were supposed to be.

"Having his eyes isn't such a bad thing," she offered, gently. "They're a nice shade of blue."

Khayos laughed, a bitter ghost of the humour the gesture should have entailed.

"Alright, you two?" Hope appeared in the doorway.

He was a stocky young man, already slightly smaller than Khayos was, but clearly the elder of the pair. His sun-radiant golden skin practically glowed, thick lion's-main of scarlet hair rippling when he moved. He oozed power, strength and confidence, a strong determined warrior, looking no older than twenty. It was a display that made his siblings roll their eyes at least once a day.

Destiny marked, with a cynical quirk of her eyebrows, that his bare chest was on fully apparent beneath his harlequin waistcoat, a sure sign that he was nervous. Hope always went out of his way to make himself look powerful when he didn't feel it.

"Alright, big brother," she answered, with a cordial inclination of the head.

"You think showing that six pack makes you look like a big man, Hope?" Khayos enquired, somewhat less tactfully, a provocative grin twisting across his lips.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do," Hope assumed the air of one totally unaffected by his surroundings, "bigger than you, anyway, little brother."

"Oh yeah?" Khayos leapt onto his feet and straightened his back, "who was an inch taller, last time we checked?"

"Height has nothing to do with it," Hope waved him off.

Destiny giggled. Seeing her older brothers digging at one another gave her an odd kind of pleasure. She suspected it was her mother's spirit-essence, of whom she alone amongst the three carried. It made her more likely to feel maternal towards her elder siblings.

"Ah, give it a wrest, will ya?" Hannah swung herself around the entrance of the Maru cock-pit, her crystalline eyes narrowed into cat-like slits, but carrying a playful glint none the less. She was already in combat gear, a rifle slung across her back. "You two bickering are doing my head in! And be nice to my mama's ship! She'd be turnin' in her grave if she knew what you lot have been up to in it! If she'd had a grave to turn in, 'course."

The eighteen year old sat down on a conveniently placed metal crate, took off her rifle and inspected it with a critical eye. She was a rare and wild looking sight, wearing a denim shirt with the sleeves torn out, (Nietzschean bone blades on full display,) and a pair of light parachute trousers that looked as if they had been put through a shredder one-too-many times. Her thick, unwashed, honey-coloured hair was tied and clipped and jelled into something resembling a Mohican, wound through with tiny beaded braids and various coloured dyes. A long, blue-scaled snake wound down her right arm, while various Celtic-looking symbols swirling up her neck and across her cheeks. Her exposed belly-button showed the trailing ends of yet more tattoos, an ouroborus snake, eating it's own tale, looping right round her back.

"We nearly there yet?" She asked, still engrossed in checking her rifle.

"Just about," Khayos answered. He'd seen the disapproving looks Hannah drew any time they ever went near a civilised drift. The tattoos, the bone blades, the gang symbols… it all screamed 'half-breed'. And people didn't like half-breeds.

Personally, though, he thought she was fantastic.

"Ah, the teseract field," Hannah said the words with relish, "ceaseless marvel of marvels!"

"You haven't seen the Rout of Ages," Khayos told her, "you think the teseract field is good…"

"We have to take a day trip there some time," Destiny put in, "you know, sandwiches, cake, road trip, new universe… might be fun."

"The Rout of Ages is not a place to be flippant about, Dessi," Hope reprimanded.

Destiny rolled her eyes. "Oh, so now we have to be careful. This, coming from the guy who gallivants through time practically everyday in an attempt to save a crumbling universe."

"Time travel is different." Hope said, "I, we, were born for that. We feel our way blind, we know what we're doing. Another universe… it's dangerous messing with that kind of thing. Really dangerous."

"Aw, lighten up, boss man." Hannah waved part of the rifle she was now expertly taking apart at their leader. "We get too serious in this business, and we'll all be outta our skulls in an hour."

There was a sudden bleep from the Maru's sensors, and Khayos returned his attention to the monitoring systems. "We're almost in range," he announced.

"Suit up, people!" Hope ordered. "Dessi, tie your hair back, Kay, put on a decent shirt, and Hannah, put that damn rifle back together!"

"Yes, captain, captain sir!" Destiny stood to mock attention and saluted.

Hope ignored her, heading for the intercom, as Khayos and Destiny went to get changed, "Trident, get out of bed! Rommie, Shailen, stay in the engine room!"
There was a crackle, then the reedy voice of a young boy echoed back tinnily over the transmitter, "aww, Hope! Can't I come, please? Just this once?"

"No way, short man!" Hope answered, "we're almost certainly gonna have to fight our way through a Magog swarm to get to this one, and you aren't going anywhere near those things! Make sure he stays put, Rommie."

"He's not leaving my sight, Hope." The Android's disembodied voice was firm.

"Trident!" Hope hit the intercom again, "Trident, wake up!"

Silence.

With a groan, Hope turned round for any likely volunteers, "Hannah! Go wake Trident up!"

Hannah sighed, clicking the last part of her rifle back into place and standing up, "I'm on it."

Hope turned to look out of the Maru's cockpit, at the unnaturally bright blue star they were heading towards, and rubbed his eyes. Then he muttered, to no one in particular, "Well... here we go again."