When you're outside of time, you can think for years and seconds will pass, or years can pass while you take a moment's breath...
Damn, I hate time travel.
I'm glad to see my children turned out so well, but I hate time travel... and dimensional travel... and... well, you get the idea; I hate any form of travel beyond my control...
And I fully planned to kick Sabre's cybernetic ass into the next decade when I got home, because there were a few things that he implied that weren't true, like that he had the only Dimensional Tuner...
Though I liked the uniform I wore there, maybe one day I'll try it out myself...
I never really realized how important I was to keeping the Joe team alive... Sure, Hawk and G.I. Joe had joked on occasion about how I reminded them of themselves, then they'd usually add a comment about 'but they'd never been as deep into it as I was'...
And I never realized how important my soul was to keeping me able to keep the Team going strong... or how important Athena was to saving it.
I never realized a lot of things...
Thank God, I realize them now.
The two of us stood on a hill overlooking hell... I don't know any other way to discribe it, I could see people I knew getting slaughtered... And I don't mean undergoing the Sarge's training.
"What do we do...?" Athena whispered.
"Athena..." I sighed, "I think we use the old rule of thumb; If it wears a snake, shoot it."
With a glance at each other and a nod, we each drew our sidearms and slid down the hill into the fray. Firing at Cobra Troopers as we hit the ground, we came to our feet and stood back to back, not just because of military doctrine, but more because we were there with each other, we didn't have to worry about being a battlefield away if something happened.
A dark shadow covered us and I looked up over my shoulder to see perhaps the UGLIEST Venom Trooper ever, like a praying mantis and killer bee combined, preparing to divebomb us. I pulled away from Athena and began firing above her, the two of us pouring enough ammo into the target to kill a whole nest of Vipers. The V-Troop had to have been wearing some kind of bulletproof polycarbonate body armor, though, since our rounds just bounced off of it. I've heard courage discribed as a 'desire to live taking the form of a willingness to die'... I can't say courage had anything to do with it, but if we were going to die, I was going to do my damnedest to take that bastard with me, so I dropped one of my guns and pulled my Ka-Bar from it's sheath at the back of my belt and prepared to leap for it when it came close.
In the end, I didn't need to.
"ION CANNONS, AUTOMATIC FIRE!"
It was like before, my voice, but I never spoke... Balls of blue energy began slamming into the V-Troop from somewhere behind me. Almost in an instant, the tide turned, the V-Troop flew off and the other Cobras followed as quickly as they could.
"Waspinator never could take the heat."
I turned to look at my counterpart in this world, dressed in a plain olive-drab flak jacket, a black web-harness like I had seen in some of the pictures my father had shown me of the Original Fifteen, grey shinguards, and a pair of fatigue pants in jungle pattern with, what would seem odd for anyone but 'me', urban colors. All of this was dwarfed by a large man-portable weapon system backpack he was wearing, obviously the Ion Cannons he had used.
"Major 'Turbo' Magnus and Sergeant 'Athena' Parker, I presume?" He asked.
"Not... quite," I answered... The hostility at Athena's name confused me a bit, at least, until I remembered that at first we had all-but hated each other... Somehow, that little bit gave me a good idea what to expect here...
"You married her?"
"Yes."
"You... married her?"
"Yes."
"You married... her?"
I was beginning to wonder if I was always this obtuse or if it was just a good day, "Yes! Si! Hai! Jawohl! Da! Yes, I love her, so I married her!"
"You love her?"
"Major, I swear to GOD, if you start that shit again, I'm taking you H.A.L.O. J.U.M. without a J.U.M.P..."
"No need, I think I get the idea..."
I wasn't too sure, "Oh?"
"Yeah... You're absolutely nuts. One of her is enough of a pain in the ass, now there's another and there's a me that for some reason is attracted to her... It's like I've stepped into one of the really WARPED episodes of Twilight Zone..."
I later learned that Athena... My Athena was having the same problem. Except for one thing, Turbo and I hadn't came to blows...
Yet, anyway.
"What about Daniel?"
"I don't want to talk about him."
"Why, what about him?"
"I said, I didn't want to talk about him."
"And I asked why!"
"BECAUSE THAT BASTARD HURT ME!"
And then, from what was pieced together later, was when the feces impacted with the rotory ocsillator...
In other words, the shit officially hit the fan.
"THAT 'BASTARD' IS MY BOYFRIEND!" The first Athena shouted before she lunged.
When we finally reached the center of the commotion, through the crowd of Joes looking on and, in some cases, making bets, both my counterpart and myself groaned.
"How do you stop your Athena when she's like this?"
I chuckled, "We still haven't figured out how to do that one... Usually we just point her in the direction of the nearest Cobras or Dreadnoks, turn her loose, and follow behind to record the body count."
"That's what I was afraid of... Think you can hold her back?"
"Can't promise anything... at least, not without distracting her, and the best way I can do that is-"
"STOP, I don't want to know," he shook his head, "Which one's which?"
"I can't tell, they're moving around too much..."
"Great... I'll take the one on the right, you take the one on the left."
"Right."
"No, LEFT!" One of the gathered Joes quipped.
"Can the comedy, Alpine," Nearly everyone said, in what was obviously an old joke here.
Turbo and I nodded at each other and we each grabbed the nearest Athena and pulled them apart... Unfortunately, we grabbed the wrong ones... Somehow, I should have expected that. Guess I'm getting old.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, YOU ASSHOLE!"
"THAT 'ASSHOLE' IS MY HUSBAND!"
Magnus' Laws, The Law of Stunning; When you want to stun a whole room, drop a bombshell. And believe me, it can happen, and did. Everyone, from the other Turbo, to the other Athena, to every Joe in the room stopped in shock like someone had a remote control for life and hit the pause button.
Athena shook out of my grasp and took a step forward, staring at my Athena. She turned to look at me, then back to look at Turbo, then back to my Athena before shoving past everyone and walking away.
I cocked my head to the side and looked at my wife, "She took it well, didn't she?"
She just looked back at me, "Change-up."
I nodded and walked off in search of Athena. Well, not 'in search of', since there was only one place that would make sense. In both worlds, the so-called 'DoJoe' was the training hall for ninjas of both the Naitotsurukusa and Arashikage clans, martial artists and swordsmen who weren't ninja...
And in this case, a former cheerleader and gymnast.
Athena's fighting style had always interested me, similar to a style called 'Hip-Hop-Kido' that I had seen on a tv show when younger, it was a mix of dance, gymnastics, and martial arts.
Of course, I had been on the recieving end of it a few times and not always sparring sessions. Enough to know that there was one flaw in what the sergeant was doing... Athena had lost that flaw because when we were at each others' throats we held nothing back... well, until the other Joes succeeded in holding us back at least... But the sergeant was still having trouble recovering from an aerial split-kick. How had Athena fixed that...? Oh, yeah...
"Try going into a side-roll when you land."
She stopped and looked up with a glare, "What?"
"The Aerial Split, tucking and rolling to the side when you land will make it easier to recover."
"What do you know about it, Speedy?"
I winced at the old mocking nickname, I had loved Athena so long and so much that I had actually forgotten just how much we DIDN'T get along at first.
"I know that landing like that jars you and takes up time in a fight."
"You know nothing," was the rapid retort.
I watched for a few minutes, trying to figure out how to handle this situation, what the Tomahawk would do... what Hawk or G.I. Joe would do... even what Sabre would do... Then it hit me: Sabre.
"He does love and miss you."
She missed a kick and the punching bag she was targeting hit her on a backswing, "What?"
"G.I. Joe's own one-armed bandit. You might not like her choices, but you're acting pretty much the same way my Athena did when Sabre arrived - she tried to kill him... and I can't really say I blamed her, hell, I had second dibs."
I guess that like the thought of me and Athena not being in love had become completely foreign to me, the same had happened to this Athena with her and Sabre... Devastator... Daniel.
"...You see," I continued, "...I don't know how to put this... Daniel, the Daniel from our world, he hurt her... He hurt Frontline too, and me as well, because we called him one of us... and I called him my friend, and he betrayed us all, killed one of us... but he hurt her. He became Devastator, a Dreadnok, the enemy... and Zanya's lover... or maybe he already was, I don't know anymore, I've learned things recently that make me wonder how much of what I know is true. She joined the team because she wanted to 'bring him down' herself... though to be honest, I knew, at least suspected that 'bring him down' was the long way of saying kill... but like I said, I felt betrayed myself, not the same as her, not as deeply, but still betrayed, so I didn't care... hell, the only thing I wanted was to make him bleed myself, a wish I did get..."
"He asked me to join... wanted to protect me, be my white knight... Only said something about not wanting to lose me, never knew what he meant..."
"My Athena recently told someone that I was pretty much her 'knight in shining fatigues'."
I gave a slight smile and leaned against the wall.
"Then Sabre shows up out of the blue one day; literally, pretty much like we did here, and at the time he was still wearing that synthetic skin on his arm, he dropped that not long after he arrived, and we didn't know he wasn't Devastator, and to be honest we wanted to kill him, gut him, and... do other things to him, not neccesicerily in that order, either. It wasn't till his arm was sliced open and the cybernetics revealed that we believed him, you know?
It took us even longer to trust him, accept him. You need to understand; he was seeing his best friend and the girl he loved - loves, I was seeing someone who had betrayed my trust - my Athena someone who had betrayed her love, we couldn't just say 'oh, well, you're him, just not HIM, so we can trust you', you know? Eventually we did, even found that he gave us an insight on Devastator and how he worked that turned the tide more than a few times. But the feeling of mistrust never completely went away. Don't get me wrong, I trust Sabre with my life, but at the same time, I still remember that one Sabre turned on us, so I do watch him a bit closely... It's the same for Athena, she's always a little wary...
It was the commonalities, stubborness, command, a reason for it all to be personal, even a little bit of fear, yeah, that eventually brought us together... we had no control over it, it just happened.
What?"
I had noticed during my narrative that she was looking like she wanted to say something.
"Why did he never come back?"
"I've... never asked. I don't know... maybe it's because he's still fighting Cobra there... I think it's more than that, though... I think he knows that Devastator is somewhere inside him, so he wants to beat the Devastator of my world both to redeem himself that he, even a different him, could do what Devastator did, that he wants to beat Devastator to beat the darkness in himself that Devastator represents... I don't know, but I do know this: I have lost track of the number of times he's talked about 'his world' and 'his Jessica', Sergeant, you're all he ever thinks about."
For the first time since entering this world, I saw its Athena smile.
"That sounds more like the Daniel I love..."
"Isn't there such a thing as a Nonfraternization Policy where you come from?" Turbo asked.
My Athena laughed, "Yes, and rules on facial hair, uniforms, and a bunch of other things that both Hawk and Tomahawk have let slide over the years until G.I. Joe's gotten to the point it's almost a branch itself with its own rules... Besides, it technically doesn't apply in our case."
"Technically?"
"Don't ask me the... oh, what is it he calls it? The bedroll lawyer aspects of it. When we were sent on a long-term mission to Ireland, we were actually officially discharged. Unofficially we were still Joes and on assignment, but our files said we were no longer on the team. Because of that, when the mission ended and we were officially recommissioned... well, re-enlisted in my case, we fell under a loophole regarding being in the relationship prior to being on the team, so nothing could really be done... not that that many of the team even know..."
"Sounds like you could get in a lot of trouble."
"Hm," she tilted her head to the side and then nodded once, "Probably... If anyone cares. Flint and Lady Jaye are married, same for Scarlett and Clutch, my parents too... and there's enough father/son and brother teams in the unit that it'd be more surprising if anyone did care."
Turbo looked closer at her neck, "What's that?"
"What's... What?"
He reached his hand over and pulled on a cord that her movement had revealed, "What's this?"
She took it from his hand and pulled it out of her jumpsuit, revealing a metal heart with a gemstone in the center hanging from it.
"That's a topaz."
She laughed again, "Yes, and the stone on Johnnie's ring is an aquamarine. I wear his birthstone and he wears mine, so?"
Turbo shook his head in annoyance, "The more time the two of you are here, the more certain I'm that he's a complete and total DUMBASS!"
Before a retort could force its way out of my Athena's mouth, klaxons began to blare and warning lights flash.
"Turbo to Sparks, report!" Turbo shouted into his Gauntlet.
"We've got a wave of V-Troops, looks to be mainly Sand Scorpions and Coil Crushers, with Scorpion and Waspinator leading them," Came the response.
"Get the ground troops to the surface level. Scramble the J.U.M.P. Troops, contact the twins, Bazooka, Leatherneck and Dial-Tone and have them in the E-Frames and ready to be our heavy support if the J.U.M.P. Troops go down."
"Roger that, Major. Starduster, Grand Slam and Stalker, assemble your units and get them into the air..." Sparks' relaying of the battle plans trailed continued as Turbo turned to my Athena.
"What frequency does your team use?"
"One-hundred point seven."
"Get your boy-toy and tell him to set his Gauntlet to freak 98 point 9 to recieve our com-traffic if the two of you want in."
It was almost sad, I thought at the time. There wasn't the same team fluidity I was used to with this group of Joes. Not that they weren't watching each others' backs, but there was something missing, it might have been Sabre, I don't know. I just knew that even with two extra people, the odds were making me remember the day the Colonel took us to the Alamo and I stood at the brass strip that marked where Travis drew his line, I couldn't help but feel, then for the two-hundred and sixty-five there and now for these Joes, that they knew winning was unlikely, but were still determined to send as many of the enemy to pave the way before them as they could.
Greenshirts squads wearing J.U.M.P. Jetpacks were dive-bombing the V-Troops as best as they could, but between the different attacks of the V-Troops, both they and the ground troops were, well... losing ground. Even the Exoskeleton Frames, the E-Frames like the Defense Mech and Ground Assault E-Frame weren't turning the tide this time.
My Athena and I were covering The Ramp, the main entrance to the Pit, as best as we could. Not an easy task in the middle of a desert where Sand Scorpions could go underground and come up anywhere. Barricade, Tunnel Rat, and Widescope were providing support, but like the rest of the team, the five of us were being pushed back down The Ramp.
When a Sand Scorpion burst out in front of my Athena and she flipped it over her shoulder and down the Ramp, I noticed just what she flipped it into and turned to Tunnel Rat.
"Why aren't those E-Frames active?"
"Well, those three," he gestured to a large one, a regular one, and one that had no legs, "are captured Cobra units, damaged and incomplete. The only Joe unit still down there is the Urban Assault E-Frame."
"Why!" I shouted as I fired a clip empty into an oncoming Coil Crusher.
"It's a prototype Exo-Changer, no one's been able to handle it yet!"
"Bullshit! Athena, follow me and pick one!" I ran and skidded down the ramp with my Athena following, leaving the other three at the top.
Probably not the most unit-minded option, but if we didn't we'd lose, if we did and failed we'd lose, so we had one chance to shift things around and if they wouldn't take it, I would...
Knowing my Athena was following me made it easier. It always does.
When we reached the bottom, I hit the release to open the hatches for the Urban Assault unit while she climbed up a ladder into the larger unit. As I positioned myself in the E-Frame, the hatches around my legs and chest closed and the Cyberlink extended to press against the base of my skull, establishing a link between it's CPU and my own brain through the nerves on my skin.
"Urban Assault E-Frame, Turbo Cyberlinked."
"Amphibious Assault E-Frame, Athena Cyberlinked."
"A million ways to screw this up and only one to get it right..." I remarked.
"Odds are in our favor for once, huh?"
"Yep. All we need now is a little ammunition... and a lot of luck..."
"What?"
"Nothing, it just seems like I heard something like that once before. Ready to move out, beautiful?"
"I'm in a highly advanced battlesuit with heavy weaponry, what do you think?"
I chuckled and lifted off with the leg mounted thrusters guiding me up the ramp and into the desert above, "Last one to down a Venom Trooper buys dinner when we get home."
"Hope you haven't spent all this month's pay, Johnnie," came the reply over the E-Frame's communication systems as the Amphibious Assault E-Frame followed.
As I crossed through the opening and into the sunlight, I began to open up on the other side with the chain gun mounted on the E-Frame's left arm...
As someone once said, 'Rubber bullets. Honest.'
At the same time, I took precision shots with the double-barrelled energy cannon on the right arm to even the odds against heavily outnumbered Joes. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Amphibious Assault E-Frame was firing on large concentrations of V-Troops.
I couldn't help it...
I activated the E-Frame's outside speakers and remarked to the Cobras, "Hear that boys? That's the sound of the tide turning, and not in your favor, either!"
That's when the second wave of Swamp Rats and Razor-Troopers appeared.
My counterpart's voice came over my Gauntlet, "You just HAD to open your mouth, didn't ya, Dumbass?"
"Oh, shut up," Athena's voice countered, "How the hell was he supposed to know?"
My Athena broke in, "Less talking, more shooting."
"You take the ugly one," Athena commented.
"No, you take the ugly one," Turbo, who she was appearantly talking to countered.
I just sighed, "They're ALL ugly ones, just take 'em!"
How long the battle continued for, I don't know. I was operating on instinct and training, same as everyone else, and time had no meaning.
Then a group of Swamp Rats managed to fire the acid spray from their wrists in a large enough amount to take out the Amphibious Assault E-Frame's thrusters, bring my Athena down in the middle of them. Before I could react, Scorpion's tail-mounted acid gun burned off part of the Urban Assault E-Frame's legs, barely missing my own... but taking my thrusters with them.
I was going down myself.
Then a thought appeared in my head; Transform.
Transform.
Transform!
"TRANSFORM!"
The last one I had shouted aloud and I felt the E-Frame respond; the remaining parts of the legs stiffened and part of the back swung down to lock a wheel into place. At the same time, the arms pulled themselves out of my grasp and bent backwards, also rotating to bring a second wheel into position.
Somehow, during all of this, I was turned over and facing a Heads-Up-Display and control sticks...
The Exo-Change Tunnel Rat had told me about had turned the Urban Assualt E-Frame into a motorcycle.
A motorcycle. Now that was something I knew how to use.
I hit the ground hard on my rear wheel and dug in before the front wheel hit and I was off. It was like no motorcycle I had ever ridden, civilian, Recon Sled, R.A.M. or other. The Cyberlink allowed a level of control beyond what I was used to. I didn't have to think... Actually, it was quite the opposite, that was all I had to do: Think. Think fire the chain gun, think fire the energy cannon, think left, think right...
Think MAXIMUM SPEED to go THROUGH the Venom Troopers!
That left two Coil Crushers and a Razor-Trooper between me and my Athena.
The Crushers cracked their knuckles and the Razor-Trooper extended his claws...
I drew more power into the engine from the fusion pack and spun the chain gun up...
Then I spun a one-eighty and zoomed off toward a nearby rock that was jutting up. Circling around behind it, I turned and put as much power as I could into the engine to use it for what I wanted to...
I wear two grenades on my vest, and they got dropped like bombs right among the three V-Troops as I jumped over them.
When I skidded and spun to a stop, I looked up in surprise...
"Heh, damn, I made it..."
"Nice, now mind getting me out of this damn thing?" My Athena complained from the nearly overturned Amphibious Assault E-Frame.
I cut away the part of the cockpit that had been bent on impact with the energy cannon as best as I could.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you ladies shouldn't swear?"
She climbed out of the E-Frame and fired her sidearm as a Swamp Rat that was coming up behind me.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you I ain't no lady?"
It took time, but eventually we won...
But the price was high; three Greenshirts killed, a dozen or more injured, Lifeline, Barricade, Groove and Repeater would all be off the active roster for some time, and there was no way of telling which of the dead or wounded Venom Troopers were Cobra volunteers or civilians forcibly Venomized...
We won the battle when Cobra retreated...
But none of us would be throwing a victory celebration anytime soon.
Besides, for two of us it was time to go.
"Listen... I know we didn't get off to a good start... and really, I can't see the attraction in your choice, myself... but I'd like for you to do me a favor."
"What's that?" My Athena asked her counterpart.
"Pass along a message to Daniel for me; tell him 'Soldier Boy'."
"I don't know what that means... but I'll tell him."
Turbo looked at me, "And tell I said to get his butt back here so I can kick it for leaving me with that," he pointed his thumb toward Athena.
"Oh, no," I groaned, taking my Athena's hand and letting my finger hover over the activation button of the Dimensional Tuner, "We're not sticking around for another round of this."
And we were off again, hoping this time we were going home...