Disclaimer: I don't own any characters that have been stolen by me to appear in my story. I just use them for fun and sadly little to no profit.
The interdimensional wormhole transported Cryos to a place he hadn't gone in a few years: Wahsu's lab. There was a time when he was still learning how to be completely independent, when he went back there every night. But eventually he learned how to take care of himself on the big wide Multiverse and he only visited Washu once every few weeks or months.
But after The One had been defeated, he had hardly seen her at all. He had just taken Yamna to her once for a check up when she was a baby and hadn't returned since.
As soon as he touched the floor something struck him from behind and knocked him down. Kentra grabbed Yamna and pulled her back from whatever was attacking. And in Washu's lab, it could be anything.
Cryos rolled and sprung to his feet. His blades sprung out and sliced at his attacker, there was a clunk sound, like bone on bone. Then, Cryos finally got a look at his opponent.
"Zon!?" He asked in shocked disbelief.
"Cryos!?" Zon asked back.
Zon was a genetically engineered giant bug that Cryos had battled years ago, he had won, and discovered that the only reason the largely peaceful insect fought was for money to make a supplement that he needed to survive.
Cryos had taken him to Washu to create the supplement and Zon had joined their side in the battle against The One.
Last Cryos had seen Zon, he had been set up with enough supplement to last him for several hundred years and had taken up meditation with Piccolo back in Cryos's home Universe.
"What are you doing here?" Cryos asked him.
"I was assisting Washu." He answered. "It seems that she was working on a way to stabilize wormholes so that many people could pass through at one time, unfortunately, her first attempt created a wormhole that she can't close, and it is letting a multitude of dangerous creatures into the lab."
A strange creature that looked like an angry wolf with dragonfly wings went buzzing overhead.
"One moment, I must attend to this. Washu is over by the cloning vats. It seems a few insects have gotten into them and, well, you can imagine the consequences there." Zon turned and flew after the wolf-fly.
"Well, lets get this over with." Cryos picked up Yamna and signaled Kentra to stick close before he took off.
Washu wasn't hard to find, she was battling a swarm of beetle-like creatures with a flamethrower. Every few seconds another bug would come crawling out of the cloning vat, and each one was bigger than the last.
"We should have brought Draco." Commented Cryos.
"I just hope Pahrac can keep an eye on him for a few more minutes." Said Kentra
Draco was banned from Washu's lab forever when he managed to eat several times his body mass in chocolate before getting loose. Washu still hadn't managed to rebuild her robot army after the incident.
Cryos handed Yamna to Kentra and landed next to a very large machine. He reached down and picked up the several ton device without exerting himself. He flew the machine over the cloning vat and then dropped it, crushing the cloning vat, along with all the creatures growing in it, flat as a pancake.
Washu looked up at him and gave a half smile. "You took care of that problem in an efficient, if destructive way, Cryos. But I'm glad to see you anyway. I was just about to call you. Have you seen Zon around?"
"He went chasing after some dragonfly/wolf thing." Cryos told her.
"Ah… They seem to have a nest somewhere in the lab. Anyway, I think with your help I can close the portal. Come with me."
Washu led them to an aria where there was even more destruction than the rest of the lab, and, floating in the middle of it, was a gigantic wormhole.
"It seems that it's just too stable, my machines normally close a wormhole by causing instabilities that make it collapse, but this one is stuck. I think that if we can force enough power through that wormhole going back the other way we'll force it to close."
"It doesn't look that stable to me." Commented Yamna.
Washu spun around and looked for the source of the voice. "Who said that?"
"I did." Yamna stepped out from behind Kentra and looked up at Washu.
"That can't be little Yamna, could it?" Washu asked. "Last time I saw you you weren't even able to open your eyes." She shook her head in disbelief. "I can create life in this lab, but it's still a miracle to see it grow up. Now, anyway, back to my too stable wormhole-"
"But it's not stable." Yamna insisted. "I can see the parts where it wants to break. Something is keeping it open."
"Listen, I'm the scientist here." Washu stood up to her full height. Not very tall, but far taller than little Yamna. "None of my machines in this sector are even working anymore. There's no way one of them is keeping it open."
"No, not outside." Agreed Yamna, "something in there is doing it."
"I'm sorry," Washu was getting annoyed. "But unless you can fix this problem then you're going to have to…" Yamna started to toddle over to the wormhole. "I didn't mean that!" Washu shouted.
Cryos and Kentra both dove after her, but she tripped and they smacked their heads together. Somehow she managed to roll back to her feet and arrive at the wormhole before Cryos could even get up.
They all looked on in amazement as the little girl waved her hand and the portal closed.
"See?" She giggled. "It only takes a little push if you get it in the right spot.
No one understood how she had done it, but a four year old girl had done what the brilliant and powerful Washu couldn't. She had closed the wormhole and nobody could figure out how.
It wasn't like she hadn't done strange things before, sometimes it seemed like she knew when trouble was about to happen. On more than one occasion she had had very bad and very correct feelings about things that were about to happen.
And of course, there was the way she made friends with all the animals.
But this was the first time anything like this had happened. "Yamna, how did you do that?" Washu asked her.
"I just pushed it and it caved in." She said like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Daddy had something he needed to ask you."
"Oh, yeah,." Cryos had completely forgotten about that. "I need a time machine."
"Traveling between dimensions isn't enough for you? You need to travel time too?" Washu demanded.
"No that's not it!" Kentra yelled. "Cryos! Show her!"
Cryos reached into the sling that Luke had given him. It had been found with the blade and was designed to fit under your shirt, making the sword nearly invisible. He pulled out the blade and held it in one hand, and then he popped the blade out on his other wrist and held them side by side to show that they were Identical.
"This was found in the tomb of an ancient Jedi master. It's defiantly one of mine, but it's almost a thousand years old." Washu carefully took the sword and inspected it closely. "I want to find out how one of my blades ended up back then."
"You realize of course that it was probably left there by yourself when you went back in time to find out what it was doing back there." Washu pointed out.
"Yes, so?"
"So if I refuse to give you a time machine then you'll never go back and leave the blade, then we won't have this conversation, so I won't stop you from going back and you will go back and leave the blade, which you will find and come to me to ask for a time machine."
Cryos and Kentra stared with glazed over eyes. Yamna played with a small bug crawling across the floor.
"It's a paradox!" Washu told them. I have to give you the time machine or I'll create a paradox which could cause the collapse of this and every other Universe! Come on, time machines are right over here."
Washu lead them over to a small room full of advanced-looking machines.
"This is the temporal distorter." She held up a pair of rings. "You set it to when you want to go and stand in between the rings like so." She dropped one ring on the ground and held the other up in the air above it. When she let go of it, it stayed there floating in the air. "And these," she held up a collection of small jewelry rings. "are temporal stabilizers. Traveling through time is easy, it's staying there that's hard. So long as you wear these, you won't drift through time. If you took your ring off while in the past, you would drift, eventually ending up back in the present. But the trip would be very unpleasant, believe me. So you want to go back to the exact spot where you arrived, then you will appear back in the distortion rings at the exact moment you left as soon as you take off you small rings. Got it?"
Even Yamna nodded.
"Good." Washu gave them a set of distortion rings and a whole collection of small stabilizer rings. "I've already set these distortion rings for you. Now get moving, I have work to do."
Cryos punched up another wormhole and went back to the planet Cirtouseia.
He expected mass destruction and Draco's evil laughter, but found only peace and quiet.
He liked down at Pahrac and asked. "What happened to the winged blunder?"
Pahrac smiled and opened his mouth just slightly. Draco was visible behind his teeth. He wasn't happy, but for some reason he wasn't trying all that hard to get out.
"I told him if he tries anything I'll gargle acid." Pahrac said around his mouthful of feathers.
"Good work, but I need him out here now. And put this on." Cryos handed Pahrac a ring, then grabbed Draco as soon as Pahrac spit him out and stuck a ring around his neck.
Cryos looked over at Luke and handed him the blade. "We're going to figure out the story behind that thing right now. We're going back there to find out exactly where that blade came from." He slipped on his own ring and tossed one to Kentra before picking the smallest one for Yamna.
Cryos dropped one of the distortion rings to the floor and set the other in the air above it.
"We'll be right back." He told Luke as he, Kentra, Yamna, Pahrac and Draco and crammed into the tiny floor space inside the rings. "Hold these, one of us might show up needing them." He handed the last of the rings to Luke and then waited for the distortion rings to do their work.
He didn't have to wait long. "Good-" Luke started to say good bye before the bright white light drowned out the world and transported them back in time."
