The following is Chapter 1 of Part 2, "Dimension Hopping." I have decided to keep the fic on this story as there doesn't seem to be an entry for the other IP represented in this work.

"Are... Are you sure you should be going this fast?" Duelo taps his fingers on the dashboard of my Solara.

"Yeah, why not?" I respond, weaving past yet another set of slow drivers.

"Well, I see some numbers on the side of the road, labeled 'speed limit', and from your instrument cluster it appears you're going about 40 miles over said speed limit."

"Meh." I swerve around another driver, who almost loses control themself. "I know where the speed traps are on this road, I'll just slow down for them."

"I wanna get off this ride." Paiway moans from her spot behind my seat.

"It's only going to be a bit longer." Parfet pats Paiway's head. "It is only going to be a bit longer, right?"

I glance at my phone. "Maybe thirty minutes? We're lucky I used to live so close to D.C."

"You must live at the center of the world." Duelo gestures out of the car's window. "There are so many people we have passed and even more going in the other direction."

I snort. "Hardly. You're going to see an extremely small slice of a large-ish city on our way to the sausage HQ."

"It's USIDSG." Parfet corrects.

"It's Sausage."

"USIDSG."

Duelo politely clears his throat. "Large-ish?"

"I don't have exact numbers, but this city isn't even in the top ten by population in this country, let alone the entire world. The traffic out there isn't even that bad, if we were out here around lunch the traffic would be at a standstill."

Duelo looks back out of the window, for once his calm demeanor broken.

Parfet seems to be in a talkative mood though. "So, J-Jer?"

"Just go with John." I reply.

"John, then. What's been going on with you in the past few years?"

"Not much. Punched someone, got kicked out of the house, dropped out of college, now I live in this car."

"A-ah." She summons up some more courage before speaking again. "I see you still have one of DIta's UFOs."

I glance at the tacky thing hanging in my rearview mirror in lieu of fuzzy dice. "Well..." My voice loses some of it's vitriol. It's not Parfet's fault. Calm, calm. "It's important to me. She gave it to me right before everything reverted back to, ah, 'normal'."

"So you still think about them?" She prods.

"Of course." I slow down as the traffic in front of me thickens. "It's hard not to."

"I think," She says slowly. "You might need to be careful around them."

I twist in my seat to glance at the engineer, who is staring at her feet, hands wringing out her knees. "...Why?"

"W-Well, you have to remember that we basically forgot all about you until the Paksis reminded us about you and gave us our memories back." She scratches her arm nervously. "Dita and Hibiki are very close now, and Meia has Misty to take care of now."

"...Oh."

"Yeah, Dita probably likes Hibiki more than you." Paiway says, but her insult falters a bit a second later when she makes a retching sound.

"Well..." I spot an opening in the next lane and quickly slot myself in place. I can feel my stomach sinking as I work up the nerve to ask the next question. "Is she happy?"

"Huh? Yeah, for the most part obviously, but-"

"And Meia and Zan?"

"Yes, but-"

"That's good." I cut Paiway off. "Duelo, take this."

He receives my phone and carefully examines it. "How do you fit so much technology into such a tiny box?"

"It's kinda funny, really. In a lot of ways, my dimension is a lot more advanced than yours. We have a lot smaller tech, a better communication scheme, more advanced medicine probably, we don't use bloody VHS plugged into our gen 13 HDMI sockets-" I suppress another snort. "Well, you guys have space travel, including faster than light and gravity generation, stuff we haven't figured out."

"I think I have much to read up on now. I must request medical documentation to verify some of my findings." Duelo says.

"Maybe later." I point at the phone in his hands. "For now, tell me where I'm going."

He looks at it for a few more seconds before reading the text. "In zero point one miles, turn right onto 50."

"Aw, shit." I quickly hit the brakes and swerve across a lane to get to the exit.

Paiway makes more retching sounds, and suddenly the car smells a lot worse.

I wish I had more than one coat.

It's freaking February, and for whatever reason, the sausage group is having a hard time with our identities. Sure, three of us don't exist in any known database, but shouldn't they have procedures for this, as their mission is inter-dimensional in nature?

I had to give poor Paiway my jacket, and Duelo had shrugged off his lab coat for Parfet's sake, but it's still really, really cold out.

Right now, I have my phone to my ear, waiting for Hader to pick up her damn phone and let us into the building. This is the third time I had tried contacting her, and she still hasn't responded.

"Hi, you've reached the mailbox of Sarah Had-"

I end the call again."Okay, back in the car."

Parfet gives me a look. "Huh? Isn't this the place?"

"Maybe, but it's cold. You all need to stay warm." I toss her the keys. "Make sure the heater's cranked. And remove the pukey floor mat, no point in keeping it in there for now."

She nods and stares down at the keys in her hands.

I turn back to the plain concrete building, taking up an entire block of what is otherwise a very historic and frankly haphazard town. If you had told me that the government was hiding something in this town, you wouldn't have needed to give me an actual address, this place practically screams "we're up to no good."

"Alright." I step up to the building and knock on the door once again. No response, as expected. "I'm going to count to three!" I announce to the door.

"One."

"Two."

I reach into my waistband and withdraw my Sig P320, leveling it at my engine block.

"Thr-"

The door bursts open and two football linebacker types with assault rifles burst out of the door.

"Oh, so someone was home. I thought I had the wrong location." I tuck the gun back in my waistband, which doesn't seem to set the two at ease.

"What are you doing?" One of the men asks. His uniform looks vaguely Army, and it seems to indicate a Sergeant with the last name of Reilly.

"Well, Sergeant, I was told to bring these three here, one of them puked in my car, and it's like ten degrees out here." I gesture vaguely at the car. "I'm tired, and did I mention it's fucking freezing?"

Another car pulls up, a black sedan with window tint thick enough to stop a bullet. Before anyone can say anything, Sarah Hader climbs out of the passenger door and looks between the sergeant and me. "What's going on?"

The sergeant turns to Hader. "He pulled a gun on the VIPs."

"I was aiming at the car." I say.

Hader gives me a look. "Why were you aiming a gun at your car, which I must note, currently has our VIPs inside of it?"

"Eh, I was getting bored of the whole, 'super secretive government facility' routine. I'm here for one reason, and I have a much better bargaining position than you want me to believe."

She crosses her arms and sits back on her heel. "Oh?"

"Yeah." I pull my pistol out once again, and the Sergeant tenses up. "Normally, I'd be dead right now. However, everyone here knows that I'm a valuable sample. It's probably a bit easier to get answers from me alive rather than dead." I gesture to the Sergeant. "Though, I suppose in the end it's up to you to decide I'm much more trouble than I'm worth."

"You're hardly unique, Jerry." She calmly states back.

"They are." I stick my thumb over my shoulder at the car. "And they're only cooperative if I'm alive." Probably.

She turns to the Sergeant. "Stand down."

He reluctantly lowers his weapon, and gestures for the man beside him to also lower his weapon. I follow suit by once again holstering my firearm. De-escalation, fun times!

Duelo emerges from the car. "John, what's going on?"

"Good news!" I turn to face them. "We can go inside now!"

"Wait, we never-" The Sergeant starts, but Hader cuts him off.

"Just, let them in for now." She pinches the bridge of her nose.

Parfet, Paiway and Duelo head in the door, lead by the Sergeant and the other soldier as Hader starts talking to me in a low voice. "You may think your bargaining position is great, but please also remember that you need us to get what you are after, and antagonizing us isn't going to help you in any case."

I give her a look. "I don't need anything. I'm only going along with your stupid organization because it helps some of my former acquaintances."

She raises an eyebrow. "I was led to believe some of them are far more than 'acquaintances'."

"That was two tears ago." I look away from her stare. "And they've all moved on."

"Mmhmm." She gestures to the door. "Well, why don't we talk out of the cold? You look a little underdressed for the weather."

I, Duelo, am currently sitting in a plain room. It only has on door, but it has several couches and a low table, along with a machine for making drinks, judging by the cups arranged next to it. Parfet and Paiway are also in the room. There are only the three of us in here, and we've been left here for the past ten minutes.

"I wonder where John is?" Parfet wonders aloud. "He sure doesn't seem to like these people."

"Whatever." Paiway huffs. "I can't believe we came all the way here for him."

"It was a directive from Magno." I reply. "He's part of the crew, and even Hibiki is in support of heading after him."

"Uhg." Paiway deflates into the couch. "Anyway, what are we going to do about getting back?"

"Hopefully we can work with whatever these people have for a dimensional gate." Parfet says. "I really don't look forward to making a new one from scratch again."

I agree. "It would be prudent to inspect their device as soon as possible."

"...I hope everyone's okay." Paiway mutters quietly. "I'm not sure Dita and Jura can sit still long enough for us to get back to them."

"Don't worry." Parfet goes over to the younger girl. "We'll be back with them before you know it."

The door opens and Sarah Hader steps into the room. "Hello, everyone."

"Good afternoon." I acknowledge. "I notice John is not with you."

Her eye twitches. "He's headed over to examine the evidence you attempted to provide him yesterday inside that DVD case. In the meantime, I was hoping you all would came with me to examine our device and see how ours stacks up with yours."

Parfet pushes her glasses up on her nose. "Alright lead us there!"

We follow her out of the door and past rooms filled with all manner of things. Oddly, this installation is reminiscent of Tarak. John had indicated that his government is highly militaristic in nature, but so overbearing as Tarak on the general public. This must be a product of that. Soldiers are everywhere, and those that are not soldiers are dressed in another kind of uniform I can't easily identify. It appears to button down the center, but color seems largely arbitrary.

Eventually we are lead to a room where we are instructed to go through decontamination procedures and prepared for working in a clean room. It appears this USIDSG group is taking a large amount of precautions. "We don't want to invite some sort of super-virus home, or let anything else potentially harmful to our interests back through the gate." She had stated.

Once inside the clean room, the device is truly magnificent. Our device was cobbled together hastily, based off of our understanding of the Paksis' cross-dimensionality. This looks like it is designed with a lot more care, and has more wiring heading around to obscure the walls and floors, more cabling than I had seen since the Nirvana had merged together.

As I had predicted, Parfet is instantly entranced and looking over the computers. Several of the men and women working on the device look like they're about to stop her but Sarah Hader silences them with a glance. Parfet moves around looking at this and that for a few minutes while everyone else just stands around nervously.

I move up to my beau and place a hand on her shoulder. "Does any of this look familiar?"

"Nope!" She looks up at me with a gleam in her eyes. "I've never seen anything this advanced! I gotta ask how they do it."

Despite myself, a smile crosses my face as I share in her excitement. "Then, I suppose we need to start from scratch?"

"Well, I can't even tell what they're doing." She sounds a touch frustrated. "Most of these computer terminals seem to only exist to monitor something but they aren't labeled very well." She sighs and takes off her glasses to polish the lenses. "It would be great to get these guys' help but I tried talking with a few of them and none of them speak Mejare."

"I could act as an interpreter."

"That would be nice. Blueprints of the general structure would probably be even more helpful."

Just as I am about to try to talk to some of the other people in the room, there's a knock on the glass separating the clean side from the outside. John is scowling and beckoning us over. In his other hand, he has the Vandread case we had stored our data in.

I step up close to the glass and raise my voice slightly. "Hi John."

"Hi, look, I need a meeting with everyone. I think I already figured out what this universe is."

Thirty minutes after I had gone to fetch the Duelo, Parfet and Paiway, I sit at the head of a table with a bunch of people I don't know in addition to the extra-dimensional travelers and Hader. It seems like everyone important in the organization had shown up to figure out what's going on.

"Alright." I set down the DVD case. They had hand-written observations and included photographs before tucking all of the gathered info into the case. Half of the observations are from Duelo, which means he could have just told me some of this, but whatever. "I think I have a decent idea of what universe you managed to get teleported to." I talk directly to the trio sitting to my right, ignoring the important looking man with an impressive amount of pins on his lapel.

"That is good news." Duelo states.

"I guess." I shrug. "It's not a particularly weird place. Compared to this universe, it's very similar."

The important looking man coughs from my right. "Excuse me, but I don't think we've been introduced."

I glance at the older man. "Nope."

Hader sighs. "Jerry, this is General Kirkland of the US Army. General, this is Jerry Saunders, the man who we located yesterday, probably the instigator of incident three."

I turn to face Hader. "Incident three, huh."

"Yes, I would like to make sure everyone is on the same page here before we begin properly." Hader stands up and turns off the lights as a projector starts to whine over the table we are all arranged around.

"Incident three is the third time we have detected an inter-dimensional gateway open since starting this organization back in the early two thousands." Hader starts puling up slides that are basically cue cards. At least add some pictures. "Back then, this was a theoretical exercise only postulated through mathematics. We built devices to detect dimensional rifts, but we didn't successfully detect anything until early 2017." She pulls up a map that seems to point to random spot in Kansas. "The first and second events both occurred in Kansas, in the lab of a mathematician who had theorized the same process as we had. Over a year later, we got a hit in Delaware." She looks at me. "The timing corresponds with what Jerry recalls as being sent to another dimension, leading him to meet these three."

Duelo stands up. "I am Duelo McFile. I am the chief medical officer aboard the Nirvana."

The General raises an eyebrow. "Navy man?"

I snort. "Spaceship."

The General blinks, but seems to let that slide.

Duelo continues. "To my left is Parfet BelBlair, and Paiway Underberg. Neither of them speak Tarak-"

"He means English." I cut in.

"-English, then. Neither of them speak English, so you must forgive them for not talking as much."

"Noted." The General nods to both of the female inter-dimensional travelers. Parfet returns the nod, but Paiway has retreated in on herself.

Hader coughs and continues her slides. "We had failed to track the origin and destination properly due to our relative inexperience at the time, but we have since gathered a total of seventeen hits of people traveling to other dimensions. Five have been recovered and debriefed." She turns to me specifically. "Hopefully with your cooperation we can add get more data. As far as we are aware, Jerry's case is older than all other cases by about a year and a half."

"Mmk, can we get on with this?" I ask. "While it's all fascinating, I don't care."

Hader sighs heavily. "Which brings us to today. These three are the first people not of our dimension to arrive here, and they came looking for Jerry specifically. They didn't make it here initially, but some other dimension that Jerry has supposedly identified."

"Well, I don't have, like, coordinates." I state. "But I do have a pretty good idea of what piece of fiction they're currently in."

The General blinks again. "Excuse me?"

Hader steps in. "Each of these dimensions appear to be highly similar to some of our works of fiction. The others debriefed reported that they could recognize people and events from their favorite TV shows or books."

The General sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. "Alright, go ahead."

"It appears..." I glance down at my own notes, double checking my conclusion one last time. "It appears to be a kid's cartoon about hot wheels cars."

"...What?"

I place the pictures on the table. A gray cube with the classic Hot Wheels logo outline used as windows covering it, and a picture of a car disappearing into a rainbow colored portal. "Specifically, this stuff looks to be from Hot Wheels World Race, a show about racing cars to obtain... er, the 'Wheel of Power'." I shrug. "There's a bunch of shady stuff happening in the background, but the show is geared towards preteens as far as I can recall."

Hader furrows her brow. "What is this 'Wheel of Power'?"

"It's just the magical portal opening plot device." I spin my finger in the air "'What you receive, you must give back." The entire room stares at me for a second. "It's, ah, not important right now. What I want to know is" I turn to Duelo. "How involved the crew of the Nirvana are in this universe."

Suddenly Duelo doesn't seem to want to look me in the eye.

"Duelo." I prompt.

"Not as much as you're probably thinking." He sighs. "I will affirm that we haven't tried to interfere with anything as of yet. Captain Magno didn't want to make contact planetside as a precaution, but once we detected some spatial anomalies on the surface we felt we needed to check what was transpiring."

"Okay." I drum my fingers on the table. "So let's drag them out of there." Everyone is looking at me again. "What? Having the Nirvana over there is only going to cause issues for that universe. It we bring them here, or back to their own universe, then the problem is solved."

Duelo carefully folds his hands together. "I'm not sure that the crew will see it that way. In fact, there was significant hope that you would come back with us and assist us with figuring out the spacial anomalies."

"It's just a portal to another planet or dimension or something that contains a racetrack made by Aliens." I state. "And not of the 'humans form another planet' kind, but blue skinned amphibian looking aliens. Who apparently like to race."

The room falls silent.

"Look, it doesn't really matter what's happening over there. I'll bring my DVD set over, show it to the crew and then nobody will have to screw with a currently working dimension."

"Like you screwed with ours?" Paiway snarks. She and Parfet had been given a smartphone with google translate on it to follow the conversation.

"I never wanted to screw with your universe." I grumble to her in Japanese. "I just happened to end up there, and I did try to keep everything consistent at first, but it wasn't working out."

She hmphs and looks away again.

"I think it would be a good chance to test some things." Hader says neutrally. I focus my gaze on the woman. "We've yet to be able to examine how different dimensions react to different phenomena. It appears physics can act differently depending on universe according to past data, so having an active portal would allow us to test several hypotheses."

"And we could turn a robot army lose on our reality, if they figure out where our portal is." I state. "Not worth the risk."

"Robot army?" The General sits up in his chair. "This other universe has a robot army?"

...Uh-oh. Better tread carefully. "It's not an army, per-se, but there's a lot of them, they don't exactly like humans, and they like to race. Because everything does over there."

"So if we wanted to compete-"

I let my forehead hit the desk. "What part of, 'let's not interfere!' isn't clear?"

"Son, you don't really make the decisions around here." The General says.

"I know that." I say. "But think for a minute. You're suggesting potentially ruining some other universe to satisfy your curiosity."

"Sacrifices have to be made for science." Hader states. "I think we should at least have a good look around this other universe and figure out as much as we can about similarities and deviance from our own. We don't necessarily need to interact with whatever events are going on over there."

The assembled congregation start murmuring general agreements.

I rest my head in my hands. Why do I even bother?

Welcome to part 2, where Hot Wheels cars are the new cool. And by new, I mean, this came out in like 2006.

Hot Wheels World race and it's follow up, Acceleracers, are made for TV movies designed to sell small toy cars. It certainly worked for me, making me want to go racing in some super cool cars and race on the tracks featured on the show. Now, I can shove a tiny portion of myself into this crazy world where racing beats logic.

I don't think I need to say it, but I'm gonna anyway. Jerry/John has a zero percent chance of getting out of this without having to race.