Disclaimer: I'm not even going to bother this time. I've long been out of amusing ideas for my disclaimers. You all know what is normally said in these things, I don't own stolen characters or universes. Some of my characters are original, but none of my universes are. So there's always something stolen in here.

Cryos spiraled through the wormhole. He couldn't believe he was finally on his way home. He had been dreaming of this moment ever since his memories had started to recover.

There was still a nagging fear that he had gotten the code wrong and was on his way to the wrong Universe, but he put the thoughts out of his mind. If that was the case there was nothing he could do now.

The trip finally came to its crashing end when the wormhole abruptly ended.

Cryos somersaulted in midair and landed softly on his feet.

Traitin crashed into the ground and tumbled until he hit a tree.

"Ugh, you could have warned me about the landing!" He shouted. But Cryos wasn't listening.

Instead, he was standing with his eyes closed. "Quiet, I'm searching."

"For what?" Traitin asked aloud. But Cryos remained silent. He was about to say something else until he spotted Mazzark shaking his head. Traitin figured he'd wait.

Finally, after several minutes, Cryos opened his eyes. "I think this is it. My family is here. But everything is wrong. I can sense Kentra, but not where she is. Its almost like she's somehow hiding. And I feel what might be Yamna too, but she's way too strong. And something else is wrong with her, I just can't figure out what."

"Could this be the wrong Universe?" Traitin asked.

"Not likely. Sometimes, very rarely, people will have a parallel identity in another Universe. It doesn't happen a lot, but I've seen it. I call them a 'Bizarro' cause while they look a lot like twins and have similar abilities their personalities are nothing alike." Cryos signed. "If I just felt Kentra, then maybe I'd believe that was the case. But there's no way there could be another Yamna. As far as I know, I'm one of a kind. And even if there was a Bizarro me, he probably wouldn't have married Kentra and had Yamna."

"So what do we do?" Traitin asked.

"Since you can't breathe in space and we have no spacesuit, we wait."

"It's not all my fault." The young Felon insisted. "He can't breathe in space either!" He said, pointing at Mazzark.

"True, but we've solved that problem." Cryos twisted the top of his staff and reveled a small opening. "It's an airtight space he can ride in while I'm in space. Not exactly luxurious, but it does the job."

"But isn't the staff bad for most people? Eats their energy or something?"

"Lalz are the natural caretakers of Leech Trees. They protect each other. Lalz that live in the roots of Leech Trees live longer because the trees give some life force to them. Since this piece of Leech Tree is so supercharged from my life force, Mazzark has already lived longer than the oldest Lalz in the clan, and he is still young and healthy."

Mazzark blinked a question.

"Mazzark, its fine. We can trust him, and besides, there aren't any other Lalz in this Universe, so it's not like he's going to sell your secrets to anyone."

Everyone fell silent and Cryos took the opportunity to look around. They were in a forest, but the trees were still young and growing. The canopy had not filled in completely yet. Through the gaps Cryos could see an overcast sky. Off to one direction the clouds were reflecting light.

"Let's check out the city while we wait." He said and slowly lifted off the ground and flew towards the glow.

Traitin flew after him. "Shouldn't we stay put so your family can find us?"

"We're staying on the same planet, that's 'put' enough. Besides, I wanna know if I've been here before."

Cryos landed towards the outskirts of the city. Dozens of different species were milling around the streets. Traitin looked in awe. "I'd never have believed so many different aliens could live together."

"Well believe it. And get over it. You can't go looking cockeyed at everyone you see on the street. You could fight them off, but we don't want to attract attention to ourselves yet."

"Why not? I thought you were a hero here."

"I was a hero for wining a war, but every war also has its losers. They wouldn't exactly give us a warm welcome. And considering that the Empire had a Sith leader before I showed up, and that I was almost defeated by a Sith on a trip into the past, I'd rather not get involved with them."

"I see…"

Cryos and Traitin wandered the streets without serious incident for some time. Cryos's translator microbes could handle most of the languages without any trouble. Also, the microbes had colonized Traitin as well when Cryos gave him some of his blood, so he could understand them as well.

As it turned out, Cryos had not been to this world before. In fact, he had never even heard of it. It was deep in the Corporate sector, they were self policing and tended to stick to their own business. The Empire had left them alone, at least as long as they were busy handling the Rebellion.

The Corporate sector would have been the last to fall under the Empire, simply because they would never fight back. But with the Empire gone, they were free to continue gouging every spare credit from the tourist population until the end of time.

A standing joke on these planets was that the only things free in the Corporate sector were walking and breathing, and that was only because they couldn't figure out how to deny services to those who didn't pay.

Finally, after what seemed like hours wandering the dirty and often smelly city, Cryos felt a glimmer of energy far above him. Kentra! He thought.

He took off running back to the outskirts leaving a surprised Traitin and Mazzark to try to keep up. Draco couldn't land in the city, not without knocking over a building or two.

Once he was back in the forest, he waited as the familiar shape dropped from the clouds. Draco, still in his spaceship form, landed heavily on his four pillar-like legs. His mouth opened and a silver-haired figure flew out in a blur.

Cryos leapt towards her and held her close to his chest.

A more tender moment could not have been found in a Hallmark card.

Kentra pressed her face to his chest and cried as he stroked her long, beautiful hair.

They stayed like that for some time, until Cryos tried to look at Kentra's face.

She quickly covered the right side of her face with both hands. "No, I don't want you to see…" She mumbled.

"It's ok, no matter what happened I love you."

"You don't understand, you don't know what's happened. She's a monster. Unstoppable, not even I could do anything."

"I'll straighten everything out, but I haven't seen you in ten years. Let me see your beautiful face again. I've dreamed of it every night, even when I couldn't remember my own name."

Finally, she let her hands drop.

Cryos thought he was prepared for anything, but he had to stifle a gasp when he saw his wife's face.

The entire right half of her face was burned and covered with oozing scars. But the most shocking was her eye. Her beautiful purple eye was gone!

"Now you understand…" She said. "The only one who can stop her is you!"

Cryos was practically vibrating with rage, but he cut her off. "Shhhhhh…" He made a fist so tight that his fingernails cut into his palm. He squeezed until purple blood was dripping from his hand. "First I'll heal you, and then I'll kill whoever did this to you."

She closed her eye as Cryos brought his hand to her face. He pressed his palm to the open wounds on her face. She flinched, but was strong and otherwise showed no sign of the pain.

Her pale skin flattened out and the sparse, silver scales regrew. The oozing wounds vanished and her face dried. And finally, her empty, sagging eye socket bulged out and then opened, revealing a newly-formed, beautiful, purple eye.

She smiled as tears ran down her face and she kissed him.

When she finally broke the kiss, Cryos asked "Now, who did this to you?"

She looked down. "After you left, she started getting wild. No one could control her. Not the New Republic army, not Luke Skywalker, not even me. When I tried she did this."

Dread filled Cryos's heart. He hoped he was wrong about who 'She' was. "Who do you…"

"Yes…" Kentra said. "The person who did this, and who is taking over the galaxy one system at a time, is Yamna… Our daughter."