Author's Note

For those fans of the One World(How few there are…) I've taken the liberty of having a friend commission some artwork to go along with the story. I gave her complete freedom when she drew it, and she used only what she had read(IE what you've all read) to compose it (Saves me a bit of trouble, so I don't have to worry about her spoiling anything). For those of you interested, I'll have it up on a Deviantart account of the same name (Phoenix Reece)

I'm also going to give a shot at posting my work there, and hopefully it will attract a few more readers.

One World

Throbbing, painful darkness, Reece winced for a moment and clutched his head. Pulling himself off the ground, he felt around for anything familiar, his bat, the gun, even one of the circuits or wires that were strewn about the steel floor of the laboratory. But, he found nothing, and he reluctantly opened his eyes to find himself, and hopefully Jenny.

But, the world around him was no brighter than the inside of his own eyelids.

…

A whirring, Jenny roused herself after what had been an eternity. She barely remembered falling asleep, or the vivid images of her mother that had flashed through her head. But she was awake now, awake and strangely wet.

She had been lying on the ground, and first found her own hands, examining them as if they were something new, before she pulled herself up. Her body was a bit heavier than she remembered, and yet she still pulled herself up with relative ease. She recoiled in terror, realizing what she had clung to in order to pull herself up. A twisted, perverted form of herself, dyed red and black hovered above the ground before her. She backed away, realizing she was surrounded by the doppelgangers, hung from their mechanical Pigtails by a wire rack like puppets, strung up by circuits that ran into the machines, and up into the ceiling of the room.

"Does it scare you?" She heard that disgusting voice, Spicer, pulling himself from the vicious green gel that was still dripping from her, and spilled across the ground. "I can tell, you're terrified."

Jenny took a step back, when she realized something was weighing her leg down, and she fell backwards trying to pull her leg away. She hit hard, and was pulled up again from the floor by her leg, and a pair of yellow eyes stared down on her. Another copy, but this time imbued with life, and a tasteless malice. Her face was some sort of mechanical hate, unfeeling, yet bloodthirsty, if only because Jenny was a new target.

"You should be scared, she killed your boyfriend." Jack's voice was taunting her again. "Take a good look at your sister's work." At Jack's command, the robot turned her around, still upside down, and dropped her to the floor again, but her body landed on something much softer.

It was Reece, lying on the floor. His left arm was nearly torn off, a blade had rend it from his shoulder, and his blood had became brown as it mixed with the green goo. Jenny couldn't believe what had happened, her mind needed more time to piece everything together.

"You took him too, and did this.." She whispered,

"Wrong, I didn't bring him here." His voice, Jack's, it was closer now. She hadn't taken her eyes from Reece, but she could tell he was much closer to her. "He couldn't let you go, and now he'll never see you again." Jack came closer, almost in front of his own robot, but he knew not to tread near her, the operation wasn't finished. She was still unstable.

"You killed him," Her blood, had she any, was boiling. He was close enough, now she only had one thing on her mind. She was weak, but she could still collapse his skull if she caught him off guard. She was still a robot, built stronger than a human. But the other robot, she would have to kill it first, then she could finish Jack in an instant.

"Just give it up, you're finally useful to somebody this way. With all these JS models, we'll be invincible. One Jenny Spicer possesses the military might of twenty Jack-bots, and we've already produced 30 functioning models in the span of a day. We could end this was within a month, and it's all because of you." Finally, Jenny snapped, and turned to strike.

Within an instant, three things happened. Jack, anticipating her resistance, stepped backwards and thrust his own "daughter" in front of him. Second, Jenny, as she attacked, felt something flip inside of her, a mechanism that hadn't been active in years. A blade unfolded from her forearm and she dug it into the first thing she could reach, a crunch of metal and sparking electricity let her know she was successful in her attack, but only on her first target. And finally an unfortunate Jenny Spicer model 24 was skewered through the head, destroying it immediately. Jack casually pushed the shell aside, and smiled at her,

"Honestly, it's more disappointing than anything else, You could have been a real asset. But I had anticipated something like this, something in me told me the reconversion wouldn't go through

….

Reece gripped the air around himself, knowing he couldn't be where he was without help. The factory had been around him seconds ago, but he doubted that as well. God only knew how long he'd been unconscious, and maybe he was still asleep. Perhaps for good,

"No, not yet. You're going to live." A voice echoed from all around him, "I promise your journey doesn't end here."

Light pulsed around him each time the voice reached his ears. He pulled himself up, trying to comprehend what was happening,

"I'm not sure what's going on, where am I?"

"Not dead, I know you're wondering about that. But your location for right now is where you were moments ago, but you will be moving shortly." Reece was beginning to give shape to the voice, but it was still inhuman. Angels were said to have no genders, existing outside such boundaries, and that was the closest thing he could get to identifying who, or whatever was speaking to him. It spoke again before he could ask anything else,

"Specifically, you had freed Jenny, and now you're lying unconscious and bleeding on the floors of a laboratory. Not going to die yet, though. Quite a bit more to come before that."

"Are you divine, an Angel or something?" He finally managed to get a word in as the voice paused, soon it spoke again, almost amused with him,

"Things aren't as simple as that, but I suppose you could say I am a higher power. I've spoken to you before, but it must have been vague."

"Why are you talking to me, am I special or something?"

"Very, I can assure you. You have something special you need to do."

Reece sat again, he felt like he was a child again, receiving a lecture from his father. Nothing he could do but listen and occasionally nod his head. As he waited, he began to still his own breath, feeling like he could offend his divine intervention and perhaps his decision to live would be rewritten. He felt something land in his hair, and brushed a small fragment of what looked to be glass from his head. Others were falling around him, drifting down like snow.

He picked up the one that he had brushed away between two fingers and looked carefully, trying to figure out if he had created it in his own mind, or his new friend had created them. It appeared to be a shard of broken glass, but it's surface refracted light off it in incredible patterns, like a computer screen. Lines of static ran through it, and it undulated colors of deep purple and a nearly transparent blue. It slipped, without warning, from his fingers and fell to the blackened ground of his mind again. His fingers were wet, the fragment had melted like snow between his fingers.

…

"What do you mean, "reconversion"?" Jenny's voice was bolder than it had been in years, now she had her fight back inside her, quite literally.

"What, do you honestly expect me to tell you everything, like a half-witted villain? We're not playing pretend anymore, sweetheart." Jack, still at a comfortable distance, found a hand held laser strapped to his thigh, pulling it on Jenny, and evening the ground again. "I was finished fixing you, and now I'm going to break you again so I can properly reprogram you."

Jenny tried to retract the blade, but her body wouldn't respond. The trigger on Jack's gun was already pulled, and she soon realized what was going on.

"Electromagnetic disrupter, always carry it for defiant ones like you. Now if you'll come along quietly it will be much easier for us both." He began walking towards Jenny, keeping the blaster at head level, he reached around the back of her head, feeling for something. "Of course, I trust you won't bother coming quietly, so I'll just shut you down before I dismantle you, how's that sound?"

Jenny cringed at his touch, but she had no control over her body with that pulse taking control of her. Her heart shook as he began to open her up; she had no way of knowing what he was doing. But she still felt his hand, roughly pulling on the circuits inside her, reaching into her soul. She stood, a mannequin, waiting to die.

…

"But how can you speak to me? Are you inside of me, or are you that powerful?" Reece asked. His hand was still extended to catch the glass shards as they drifted to him. They were almost like fragments of butterfly wings, yet they seemed digital. Not to mention how they dissolved into his hand.

"I don't belong inside of you, or anywhere for that matter. I exist outside dimensions, a world unreachable."

"Then how are you doing this?"

"A friend of yours, he stumbled upon me and I was shocked. No one had ever reached me before, he can somehow belong to every world, mine and yours, and the others that had come together. He was a piece of dimensional flotsam, drifting from place to place, uninhibited."

Reece paused in thought, "Homsar? He's that special?"

"Special, maybe, but he's definitely different. I can use him as a beacon to speak to you through our worlds."

"But, why?"

…

If she could cry, she would be as he slowly began shutting her body down. Her arms dropped to her sides, limp and he began on another piece of her mind.

Now that rage that had filled her over Reece's body was fading, her helplessness was becoming apparent. The anger drained from her body now that she was a prisoner again, the flicker of hope she had was vanishing.

It was now Jenny felt the pain her mother had given her, emotional pain. Her body had replicated nerves that felt physical pain, installed in her like a machine. But this pain was learned, when the war began, when she lost her mother. It was the same feeling, deep despair of a hopeless, frightened girl. Her mind began to give in on itself, she began shutting herself down just to end the feeling.

A crack of light struck by her, and Jack withdrew his arm from inside of her, and another, he screamed and the hold over her was released. Her body collapsed, as she tried to revive herself. Her arm strength returned and she found the disrupter Jack had held her with in front of her. In a rage, she smashed her fist down on the device, cracking it slightly, hopefully enough to break it.

She turned on Jack again, who, despite her efforts, threw her away with hardly a scratch, and she tumbled to Reece's side again. His suit, it made him much stronger.

"I shouldn't have broken that damn gun.." She pulled herself back up, and realized that she had been receiving help. Across the room stood a man, Kurtis, dressed in a slick white coat, the only thing pointier than his bright green hair, gelled back of course, was his nose. It seemed a bird's nose, comparable to a penguin's beak, quite a ridiculous comparison if you actually knew who you were talking about.

Kurtis, as Jenny remembered the moment she saw him, was a famous scientist, making strides in space travel and engineering. But, his greatest achievement was the reconstruction of his own body, he was a cyborg, Half human, half machine.

His finger was held decisively at Jack, still smoking. It had been the source of the powerful beam of light that had struck him twice, piercing even his heavy ballistics proof armor in an instant.

"Jack, pleasure to see you again, how are projects going? Well, I can only assume." Kurtis chuckled a little, not lowering his finger from him.

"Kurtis, I figured you'd turn up on the wrong side again. Incredible you could find enough metal to piece yourself together, was your family as lucky?" Jack's words stung Kurtis, whose calm demeanor twisted into a sharp seriousness.

"Jenny," he spoke much more seriously to her, "leave. Take Reece and leave. We don't have much time, we're destroying the factory, and every second your squadron spends here is risking your lives."

Jenny couldn't argue with him, she guessed he was right, and they both were running out of time. She quickly pulled Reece up, barely able to carry his armor covered body, and started running. She ran past Kurtis, who still held a strong stance against Jack, and when she was gone, he slowly advanced on his foe.

"So, there's no other way this can end, you're going to die here and now Jack," He cracked his knuckles, raising them before his face at inhuman speeds.

"No, you're wrong, It's not my place to die. I won't be the first," Jack raised his augmented arms into a vicious fighting stance. He clenched his fist, red energy crackled from inside the suit. They met by the tank where Jenny had been held, facing each other with stony eyes.

"It'll be a shame to kill such a promising mind, Kurtis."

"I'd say the same for you, but you're nothing but a spoiled little brat now."

...

Sirens blared, the sound of five hundred soldiers, mechanical and organic pouring from the factory to the main courtyard before the steel goliath. Each one took a rifle, the high powered lasers made especially by the Eternal Empire's masterminds like Spicer, each designed to fire a bolt of concentrated light that could pierce a body faster than a bullet with a two second head start. Their armored vehicles were like perversions of the Sherman tank, augmented with various tubes and devices of unknown, but certainly insidious, design. Explosives hung from the sides along the four barrels that sprung from the monstrous vehicles the faceless soldiers were rallied about.

Above the organized chaos, in a watch tower stood Vlad, who looked down on his troops with great pride, not as their master, but as their hero. He was their president, they fought for him and for the glorious Eternal Empire. For King and Country.

"Shame they will never meet their king," Vlad said, smiling grimly. "From the wall of his glass watchtower, he took a speaker and addressed his men. His voice, charisma not scathed by the war that had torn the world apart before his eyes, boomed over the speakers surrounding the men, who immediately took heed.

"Soldiers, I do not need to tell you for whom you fight, and for what. The Eternal Lord who reigns above us all knows this as well, he knows that you fight for the Empire, and that you are holy in that. And so he knows that you fight for his will and the glorious land that he has established. Remember you fight for order and rule in this chaotic world we were thrust into. Now go with The Lord and strike down the Rebels who would fight to see the end of us all!"

The soldiers, at his words thrust their rifles into the air, and let forth a hundred screams of war that pierced the sky. As they marched forward, Vlad turned to find his own bodyguard, Tobe, wounded and bleeding.

"Sir, forgive me, there was a Samurai, fighting with three swords, I barely escaped." He spoke trying to ration his breaths; the wounds were certainly fatal without treatment, "I couldn't find Vega, but he's certainly dead. He attempted to fight General Jack." Vlad seemed hardly concerned with his dying bodyguard, but his interest piqued when he mentioned Jack.

"General Jack is here?" A thousand thoughts ran though the mind of the genius.

The First Rebellion, he wouldn't fight alone, "Did you see where he escaped to?"

"No sir, but he's destroyed a major part of the factory, he's probably simply going to escape. There's no reason he'd risk being here longer than he has to" Vlad's eyes flashed with vicious intent for a moment, and suddenly Tobe was more frightened of his master than his wounds. But, Vlad's expression died, and his face became docile.

"But of course, no reason," He said, calmly examining his right hand, the left still supporting his weight with the gold tipped cane. He was an older man, in his fifites perhaps. "Far too old…"

"Excuse me, sir?"

Vlad, without a word, reached one hand out to the frightened man, placing his palm on his forehead. Fear paralyzed Tobe,

"I said I'm far too old to go chasing after a Samurai, but I'm sure you could.." Tobe writhed in pain, a burning sensation in his body ripped at his very mind, and the wind around the watch tower swirled. Vlad began to spark with some insidious energy, and his body changed. His skin became a deep blue, and his eyes a red abyss. And all at once he vanished, and Tobe fell to the ground, twitching occasionally. But, in a few seconds, the ninja pulled himself up, and casually brushed his tunic off, blood still dripping from it. His eyes flashed red for a moment, and he smiled beneath a face mask.

"You know what they say," The same charismatic voice of his master came from the ninja's lips, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."

Aaaaaaand FINISHED! Hope this extra long chapter makes up for my long absence.

Sorry, trust me, my schedule's a lot more loose, so I'll get a few more chapter's up soon. And remember to check Deviantart for Phoenix Reece, and I'll have my "One World" Art up!