Note – This fanfic will be slightly AU. How will it be slightly AU? Well, I'm gonna change Justice's gender from a she to a he. Yes, I know that Justice is a female, and yes the mother of Dizzy, but since this is AU some slight things are prone to change… well, gender-wise for a Command Gear anyways.

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Hannah knew she was dreaming. She was aware of this fact because she had closed her eyes as she settled in for the night, in her bed. Whenever she dreamed, Hannah experienced a sense of weightlessness that encompassed her whole body. Her dreams were always vivid - everything that she dreamt seemed in some way to be real. That somehow, the dream world that she visited was another dimension altogether and her spirit had found a way to break free of the body and visit it.

In Hannah's dream, she was floated in an inky blackness. No, blackness wasn't able to describe what she was seeing before her. The term was too simple to explain what Hannah was not only seeing but feeling. It was more like a... a void. Her feet dangled over the darkness with no trace of ground below, her arms felt like lead weights dragging her down into the nothingness. Hannah's whole body felt sluggish. Her eyelids felt heavy and Hannah, in a brief moment, thought it was hilarious that she was dreaming of sleeping. How ironic could that be?

Another being here?

The voice startled Hannah. Her eyes opened in surprise and she turned quickly, her hands already balled into fists as she searched for the owner of the voice. The feeling of tiredness left her body and was instead replaced with wariness. Brown irises darted left and right, intently searching the void in front of her. It was the first time in any of Hannah's dreams that she had heard a voice. The young woman felt like her personal place had been invaded, that someone she did not invite was watching her.

The voice spoke once more. I thought no one else could come here. That I was the only one exiled here. Did the Sacred Knighthood find, within their righteous hearts, someone else to imprison in this hell? Another Gear such as I?

Contempt and sarcasm, as hot as burning lead, filled the void around Hannah. The voice boomed, the sound similar to thunder. It was filled with authority, as strong as steel and as unbreakable as a mountain. Hannah whirled around in the dark void as pinpricks of light, few at first but then growing in number, began to fill up the void. Fear made its presence known. She no longer liked this dream. In her dreams, Hannah was in control.

But she was no longer in control here.

"Whoever you are, get the hell outta here!" Hannah yelled her threat into the void. More points of light burst in her vision. "Get the hell outta my dreams! You are not welcomed here!"

A dream? Do you think this is a dream, this vast void? That what I am is a dream? Is that all I have become now, something that people will-

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Hannah clamped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to hear that voice anymore and she no longer wanted to be in this dream.

This is not a dream. Hannah gasped, opening her eyes. How could the voice read her thoughts? I am not a voice, and this is not a dream. This place is something else altogether. You have stumbled, unknowingly, into this realm. Curious that a human could do something so remarkable. I would have thought that only Gears would have been capable of such things.

"Gear? A realm? No, this is a dream! A dream!"

Hannah felt movement behind her. A large figure; a shadow crossed over her's. The girl saw that the thing behind her was massive. A hand moved, coming towards her. That did it for Hannah. Her dream had become a nightmare; she was no longer in control. Pumping her legs furiously, Hannah began to run away from the shadow, from the figure. She raced towards one of the points of light, her breath catching painfully in her throat as she tried to place distance between her and the creature.

You cannot run from me. If you leave, then sooner or later you will return to this place.

The nightmare was catching up behind Hannah. Already she felt tired, as if she had run a marathon. With one outstretched hand Hannah reached towards a distance ball of light. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that if she touched it, then she would be all right. That she would be able to leave this dream world and never come back.

You are fooling yourself! Sooner or later you will return. Once you have crossed into one dimension, it remembers you. An imprint has been made; a door has been opened and the wind will sweep you back in!

Her hand shaking, sweat trickling down her face from the exertion, Hannah strained to touch the orb. A fingertip just brushed the edge of the burning light, then, throwing herself forwards with a painful cry, Hannah's hand enclosed over the shining orb. There was a shift and then...

... Hannah found herself sitting bolt upright in her bed, clutching the sheets to her chest as her heart hammered away. Shakily she reached out and flicked on the blue lamp that stood on her night table. The darkness in her bedroom retreated from the sudden light. Hannah warily looked around, expecting the voice in her dream to have followed her into the waking world.

Nothing was hiding behind her dresser, and over near the closet her schoolbag was in exactly the same position as she had left it after coming home. Her bedroom door was closed; pinned up on the wall behind it the poster of a dragon, the image frozen for all time, looked back at the girl as if wondering why she should be scared of a nightmare.

"Yes, a nightmare," Hannah muttered to herself. Rubbing a hand over her eyes to wipe away the sleep, she flopped back down on the mattress. Turning to look at the clock on the night table, the red digits read 4:38 a.m. "Some messed up nightmare that is keeping me from getting any sleep. A stupid nightmare and nothing more."

Flicking the light off, Hannah rolled over onto her side and ran a hand through her short brown hair. "Just a disembodied voice in my nightmare that scared the crap outta me," she muttered. "What the hell did it mean anyways? An imprint?" She snorted. "Obviously I've been reading too many science fiction books. I really need to get back in touch with reality because I've been-"

Curling up into a ball, her hands wrapped around her chest, Hannah's eyes widened as one word the voice had spoken came back to her. Gears.

Gears.

Bio-engineered weapons of mass destruction. Beings that had developed sentience and had turned against their creators. They had razed entire cities to the ground and had massacred thousands of people. The voice had mentioned the Sacred Knighthood, human warriors that had once fought against the Gears. After a hundred years of fighting the knights had finally won the war against the Gears, but not without their own casualties.

A small ball of ice formed in the pit of Hannah stomach and refused to melt. The young woman felt cold all over, and wrapped the blanket around her in an attempt to get warm. Gears still existed in the world and always, always when a Gear was mentioned it was never good. Was it the same in the dream Hannah had had? She shivered and recalled what the voice had said. That she would come back.

"Just what Gear was that?" Hannah asked herself in the darkness. "Just what the hell is happening?"