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Author's Note: Congratulations! Quite a few of you (Harry2, Aaron, greywizard1235, and smokingbarrel) knew who Kevin McTaggert is. Jay, I think you have Proteus a little confused with Legion, who is Charles Xavier's son. I know that in Ultimate X-Men the two (Proteus and Legion) were made one and the same, but in original X-Men continuity they were different people and that is what I'm basing this on. Darklight, you mentioned something about a Gargoyle from Atlantis? Sorry, I don't really know much about Gargoyles (if you are even talking about the cartoon, that is), so I don't have a clue whom you mean.

To answer some questions from the reviews:

Aaron, thanks for the offer, but I don't think the crew will visit the COPS universe anytime soon. I just don't have any idea what to do there. You will see some interaction between Xander and the Galaxy Rangers, though.

Greywizard1235, I did in fact read the Lensmen once, but I'm afraid I remember too little about that story to make a chapter or two of it. And I never heard of Paratime Patrol, sorry.

Smokingbarrel, a trip to the DCU is in the cards, but it might take a while yet, as a few other universes come first. As for Buffy and/or Faith facing Wonder Woman, well, you might just have given me a few ideas there.

And now, on with the show!

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Solo Missions 2: Masks and Disguises

#

Iacon City
Cybertron
March 7, 2005

Parallel 124

#

Quantum shift completed. Sensors Rebooting. Please wait for environmental analysis.
Quantum signature confirms successful materialization on parallel 124.
Alien environment detected. Landscape 100% non-organic. Atmosphere within human tolerance, but oxygen levels and air pressure minimal. Adjusting form to compensate. Air temperature minus 7 degrees Celsius.
Analysis complete. Location confirmed as artificial planetoid Cybertron.
Multiple radio transmissions detected. Earth date March 7, 2005 confirmed.
Multiple energy discharges detected. Probable origin: Advanced laser, plasma, and fusion weaponry. Conclusion: Battle in progress. Distance approximately ten kilometers.

Your name is Buffy Summers and you share your mind with an artificial personality called Anne. Sometimes it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between the two of you. Anne is a digital copy of you. You have coexisted in the same body for nearly half a century now. Is it any wonder that sometimes neither of you can say exactly which of you certain thoughts belong to?

Thankfully your body's artificial nature has a few perks, such as the fact that many processes (such as the environmental analysis you just went through) are completely automated, working on the same level your instincts did back in the days when you were still human. Without any conscious effort your malleable form has adjusted to the minimal atmosphere, the lighter gravity, and the low temperature. You already know, without even trying, that a battle is in progress not far from here.

You spend a microsecond going over the data Willow 12 has downloaded into your cortex regarding this mission. A simple grab and retrieve deal, no huge fights or shady undercover work. At least in theory. Your life is quite predictable in many ways, though, so you are not that surprised that you have been dumped into the middle of what appears to be a war zone.

The artificial landscape around you has a bizarre kind of beauty, or would have if it wasn't ravaged. There are signs of conflict everywhere. Scorched buildings, torn-up roads, and what appears to be ... bodies? You walk closer, wanting to take a look.

Analysis completed. Target is artificial life form designate: Transformer.
Cross-referencing with briefing files: The Transformers are a race of robotic beings with highly advanced artificial intelligence and the ability to rearrange their bodies into different shapes such as vehicles.
Target is terminally damaged. Cerebral cortex inert.

You study the corpse, if that is what it is. The robot is at least ten meters tall, if not more, and was probably quite impressive in life. Now, though, it is just so much scrap metal. For a moment you regard the crest imprinted upon its chest, looking almost like a stylized head. Some kind of ornamentation? A unit insignia? Unfortunately Willow 12's information on this parallel and its citizens is fragmentary at best.

"Any sign of our quarry yet?" you ask your digital twin while your eyes roam the landscape. In the distance you can see flashes of weapons' fire. Odds are you'll be heading in that direction, of course.

*No signs of it yet,* Anne says in your head, her voice an almost exact duplicate of your own. *The massive energy discharges are making long-range scanning quite difficult.*

You briefly go over what you know of your quarry. The situation is, in a way, quite bizarre, seeing as you are essentially hunting down yourself.

In your own dimension your body was created by Professor Maggy Walsh to be the government's ultimate weapon against the supernatural. She forged it out of magical metal she had somehow acquired and then an accident occurred, downloading your mind into this vastly powerful shell.

In another dimension, though, the esteemed Professor Walsh did not get her hands on any kind of magical metal and instead opted to create her Adam android out of a patchwork of human, demon, and cybernetic parts. The resulting demonoid (as she called it), while not as powerful and versatile as you yourself are, was still quite formidable and apparently gave the Buffy of that dimension quite a workout before it was defeated.

Or at least that was how it should have gone down. Thanks to the crisis, though, a dimensional overlap occurred and Adam of parallel 015 was displaced to this world before he could meet his end. Now it's your job to find him and get him back home so your counterpart can destroy him as history intended.

Sometimes you can't believe you are even thinking stuff like that without fainting from sheer disbelief.

"I knew when Willow 12 said this was going to be an easy mission she was..."

Your voice trails off as you spot something new. Something that ... can't possibly exist.

Your mind rebels. This is quite impossible, you tell yourself. No way can something like this exist. It goes against all laws of physics and common sense. Some part of you takes intense pleasure in reminding you that you are a magically-created android standing on the surface of a robotic world in a dimension not your own, so who are you to call anything impossible. Still, you refuse to believe what you are currently seeing.

Subject identified from briefing files. Designation: Unicron. Sub-designation: Devourer of Worlds. Artificial life form of unknown origin. Cursory analysis of capabilities complete. Designate Unicron possesses sufficient power to destroy this planet and all of its inhabitants. Threat level to Adam One android: Red! Proposed counter-measures: Immediate withdrawal. Calculated odds of survival in case of direct confrontation: 1,074,281,289 to 1.

The cold facts slip by you completely and your eyes are fixed on this impossible sight in front of you. In front of you being a very relative term, as your sensors tell you that this thing ... Unicron ... is in fact several thousand kilometers away from you. At this distance even your eyesight, being enhanced both by technology and magic, would have trouble seeing anything in detail.

If it wasn't so damn big, that is.

It looms above the horizon of the planet and you want to believe that this is some kind of trick of perspective, that it can't really be that large, but your eyes can't be fooled. It dwarfs the very world you stand upon and one huge hand reaches down like it was God himself. Steel fingertips kilometers in length dig into the ground, tearing huge chunks of it out accompanied by the sound of screaming metal. Almost as if the world itself was crying out in pain.

Unicron! A robotic figure at least 5,000 kilometers tall. Something that tall can't possible move that fast, you tell yourself, but move it does. By now you realize that the flashes of weapons' fire are almost unilaterally centered on this humongous figure, the inhabitants of this world trying to fight off this force of nature that has come upon them. You also realize they are having very little luck so far.

"Tell me I'm seeing things," you ask Anne, knowing that you are not.

*I have never seen anything like this, Buffy,* Anne answers. *I thought ... when the files said Devourer of Worlds I imagined something like Akathler. But this ...?*

"We don't have to fight that thing, do we?"

Anne is silent a little too long for you to feel comfortable.

"Anne?"

*I just managed to get a bead on our quarry, Buffy.*

"Let me guess!"

*It's heading directly toward the battle.*

It just figures, you think, that when you are dropped onto an alien world in search of a displaced entity from another dimension you will have to head directly into an ongoing battle between a race of big robots with huge guns and a thing so gargantuan it could play soccer with the moon. Yes, your life is indeed quite predictable that way.

#

Government Installation
San Francisco, USA
November 12, 1987

Parallel 198

#

Your name is Rupert Giles and you are Sorcerer Supreme, the most powerful magician in the world. Your world, that is. This world you are in right now is of a different sort. Much like the last alternate universe you visited this one has little in the way of magic. You still hold a lot of personal power, but grander workings rely on ambient magic contained in the environment. There is very little to be found here.

Once again your thoughts can't help but sweep back towards your home dimension. You held so much power there, but it didn't keep you from being killed. Or almost being killed, that is. Willow 12 plucked you out of that world before the fatal blow could fall, but it's all the same, really. You can never go back, your life there is over. Ended by the woman you loved.

Shaking your head, you focus back on the present. A simple retrieval mission, or so Willow 12 said. An artifact from another world, parallel 023, was displaced to this dimension. Not a sentient being prone to making trouble, just an object. All you need to do is find it, pick it up, and things will be over with and done.

It's not just your finely tuned instinct for trouble that tells you it won't be that easy.

Finding the artifact in question hasn't been that hard. You can feel its presence almost without trying. The All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto you carry as a pendant around your neck is humming softly, telling you where to go. Dark power radiates outward from the object of your search, enough to make you shiver.

The problems begin, though, with the current location of the artifact. From your vintage point you have a pretty good overview of the military base lying on the foot of the hill just outside San Francisco. High fences with barbed wire on top and quite a few soldiers patrolling the perimeter.

"Of course," you mumble to yourself. "Couldn't have it appear somewhere in the wilderness or such. Would have been too simple."

If the locals have already found it then your mission just turned a lot more dangerous. You have been given the details on this artifact and they have chilled you to the bone. It is a weapon, maybe the ultimate weapon, product of a science so far advanced it might as well be magic, its power beyond anything even you have ever seen, its capacity for destruction limitless.

In the wrong hands ... or even in the hands of one ignorant of its power ...

Gathering your concentration you weave a simple spell of concealment around yourself. It doesn't turn you invisible. Light still bounces off your body, all of nature's laws remain in effect. What it does, though, is implant a hypnotic suggestion in the minds of everyone who happens to look your way, clearly telling them that this person walking over there is most definitely not their problem and can safely be ignored.

Filled with a feeling of urgency you make your way down toward the front gate of the base. You could just as well levitate over the fence, of course, but with the local shortage of magical energy it makes little sense to waste any of your personal power on something that trivial. Odds are you might just need it for something else soon enough.

Walking past the perimeter guards and cameras without anyone crying foul you take a look around. There are several buildings on the base, but the Eye of Agamotto is giving you a clear sense of direction towards the largest of them. Some kind of laboratory, at least judging by the presence of people in white lab coats. You have some bad experiences when it comes to the military meddling in things far beyond their understanding.

The object of your search is somewhere in there. Odds are against it simply having materialized in a closet somewhere, of course. The most probable scenario says that it was found by someone and brought here to be analyzed. The locals would have no idea what it is except that it is clearly an alien technology. You hope they are cautious enough not to start pressing any buttons anytime soon.

You are about to enter the building past the oblivious guards when a commotion near the gates attracts your attention. There is a high whine in the air and it seems to be coming closer. People are starting to run, soldiers grabbing weapons and heading towards the gates. Something is clearly happening and you doubt it's good.

With but a little nudge of concentration the Eye of Agamotto rises from your pendant and places itself upon your brow. Immediately the world around you comes into much sharper focuses, all barriers of distance falling away. You see a group of vehicles coming toward the base. A very strange collection of vehicles, to be precise. A helicopter, a black jeep, a purple sports car. Why do these three vehicles have the base in such an uproar?

You take a look inside the vehicles. For some reason the occupants, two men and a woman, are wearing some sort of strange masks.

"Begin the assault," the man in the helicopter says. Apparently he is the leader.

Suddenly the three vehicles begin to change. The helicopter's rotor blades stop spinning and are retracted, wings extend from its side, and jet engines roar to life. The purple sports car also sprouts wings and blasts into the air. The black jeep does not start flying, thank God, but something looking very much like high-caliber weapons appear from hidden panels.

You frown. This is Earth in the nineteen-eighties. This kind of technology certainly didn't exist on your world back in the day.

"Show no mercy," the leader yells. "Bring me the artifact!"

You realize that your mission has just grown a lot more complicated.

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's Note: Again, bonus points for anyone who can tell me what artifact Giles is looking for in the M.A.S.K. world. (I know, not a lot of hints have been given, so here is one: Think Marvel Comics.)