Disclaimer: VR Troopers is the property of Saban Entertainment. Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series are property of Mutant Enemy. Other acknowledgements will be at the end. This short is in the series "Lizards, Wizards, and Demons, Oh My!" following "It's a Sibling Thing." Because I know neither shame nor moderation.

Another Cycle

Kaitlin

Three years is hardly any time at all, and three years can be forever. All depends on your perspective, I guess. Three years has seen me rise to Assistant Editor here at the Underground Voice Daily, right under Woody– which doesn't mean I'm not still up to my eyeballs in investigative reporting, we're not that big a paper. Three years has seen JB finally starting classes at U of C - Crossworld, after too many scholarship tests and applications for any of us to count. Three years has seen the former site of the Ziktor Industries building filled in, grassed over, and turned into one of the most luxurious off-leash doggie vacation sites I've ever seen. Ryan and Jeb make it a point to go down once a month and leave a… token of Jeb's esteem in Karl Ziktor's memory. I honestly can't say I blame either of them.

Three years, and Ziktor's fingers finally being taken out of the political pie here in Crossworld City, has also seen Mayor Abner Rooney soundly defeated by a challenger who actually had some basic political competence. Former Mayor Rooney took his demotion cheerfully enough– he's apparently doing pretty well for himself as a speaker at various fundraisers, able to say absolutely nothing in an artful enough way that most people don't notice. With him gone, I'd honestly thought Percy would be out on his ear, but apparently somewhere along the way, the spineless, whiny suck-up had matured into a real person, and I'd missed it. Of course, we'd all been a bit preoccupied those last few months before everything came to a head.

Unfortunately, three years has only gotten Ryan's nightmares down to every couple of months, but we'll all take what we can get. If I'd seen Grimlord eaten alive by his own overloading power source, I don't know that I'd ever have been able to sleep again.

/So when are we going to go over and offer to help with the insomnia?/

… And three years of experience has given me the control not to blush when my other half starts making snarky commentary on our love life. Or lack thereof.

::Shut. Up.::

/All I'm saying is that we could totally wear him out enough for dreamless sleep. It'd be fun!/

::There are days I really, really wonder what all Grimlord put into making you, you know.::

/Sugar, spice, and your id, mostly. Also, you spelled 'categorize' wrong in paragraph three./

… Well, crap, she was right. I quickly fixed that and was giving the article one more proofread when the phone at my desk rang. Caller ID suggested that the call was coming from a number that, from the extra digits, originated somewhere around Mars. Well, then, only one person that could be. (Professor Hart at least had the courtesy to make sure his spoof numbers were physically possible on the local telephone architecture.)

"Underground Voice Daily, Kaitlin Star speaking."

"Good afternoon, Ms. Star," the familiar modulated tones greeted me. I didn't know a lot about this particular informant; just that they were a gifted computer hacker who went by the handle of Ex-Khan and had an almost uncanny ability to access systems that really shouldn't be hackable. As in, at least once, they'd broken into an air-gapped computer system while I was talking to them, something that JB swears up and down should be impossible unless they'd had physical access. Okay, and they had a tendency to big words, poetic metaphors, and a snarky, occasionally self-deprecating sense of humor that could get a bit dark at times.

"Good afternoon. You have something interesting for me?"

I could faintly hear keys clicking on the other end of the line. "Interesting is a subjective term, but this is more in the way of a warning, or at least a caution. It seems someone is digging very quietly into the recent history of your fair city, with a definite focus on tales of the unusual. Looking, perhaps for what those tales don't mention as much as what they do."

I had to wince. The VR Troopers had been sort of an open secret in Crossworld in the three years they'd been in operation. Everybody'd known about us, but there'd been a bit of an understanding– not much was written down. After Ziktor Industries had gone kablooie, anything that had been committed to film, paper, or electrons had been quietly deleted. But the cover-up hadn't been anything organized, which meant that yeah, somebody careful might be able to figure things out by looking at the big picture.

"Any idea who?" I asked, as casually as possible. So far as I knew, Ex-Khan thought I was basically the main information source and outlet for the Troopers, trading knowledge for exclusive stories, which wasn't too far from the truth, honestly.

"Sadly, no. They've been very careful to route their inquiries through enough telephone switches that I keep losing the trail somewhere in Perrysburg, New York. I didn't even know there were more than five telephones in rural New York. And I've not been able to catch them in the act to tag them with a– well. Suffice it to say that whoever it is, they are very careful and very quiet. This strikes me as not boding well for heroes whose existence may be… somewhat deniable?"

Ugh. Tyler Steele had friends in high places, even with his ten year absence, but given the types of people who might be interested in 'deniable assets,' that might not be enough.

I kept my voice level with an effort. "The warning's appreciated, and I'll be sure to pass it on. Anything I can do for you?"

A chuckle. "Just keep yourself and your friends out there fighting the good fight," they replied ruefully. "I'm afraid I have rather a backlog of bad karma to work off– misspent youth, you know. And as the idiots I usually look after are taking a gap year, so to speak… well, I find myself branching out."

"Got it. Keep me posted if you find anything useful. And if you need anything, you know where to find me."

"I certainly do. Good day, Ms. Star, and good luck."

I hung up the phone, tapping my nails on the desk as I considered. Why would someone be looking into the VR Troopers now, of all times? Then again, JB, Tyler Steele, and Professor Hart had been spending a lot of time at the lab recently, working on something they hadn't told the rest of us about. What were the odds that these two things were unrelated?

/Roughly the same odds as us getting a date for Saturday night./

::You are, unfortunately, right. Time to call a meeting?::

/Definitely. But, uh, make sure you submit your article to Woody, first./

Ryan

One of these days, I'm going to have to get a car. The sidecar on my bike is fine for Jeb most of the time, but if I ever wipe out, that's going to be… ugly. And given how eventful the last few years have been, the chances of a wipeout are going up all the time. Kaitlin's been a good sport about chauffeuring a sarcastic talking dog to the lab every time we had an emergency, and Dad's let me borrow his car for trips to the dog park and stuff, but… Gah.

I can hear Kaitlin teasing me now, "A car! Gee, Ryan, you might finally have to grow up." Or Tao, a little more seriously but gently, pointing out that I spent ten years spinning my wheels after Dad disappeared, doing the bare minimum to keep my life running on the same old rails that meant I'd never have to move on and face a life without him.

… And then I became a superhero, found my father, lost him again, found him again, had to let him go off to freaking Norway in order to maybe finally deal with the sociopathic creep who'd kidnapped him in the first place, and then finally decisively ended said creep– look, it was an eventful three years, okay? I think I can be forgiven for maybe putting my social and emotional growth on hold for a while.

Maybe I don't have quite as good an excuse for the past three years. I plead being able to enjoy having a routine for the first time in a long time. When you're a kid, the same thing over and over is boring, but when you get to be an adult? Kinda comforting to know pretty much how the day's going to go, and that the things I love will still be there next week, and the week after that. Now if JB would stop making meaningful noises every time the subject of my non-existent love life comes up…

Looks like the days of routine are coming to an end, though. Dad, JB, and Professor Hart have been quietly working on something they haven't wanted to discuss for a couple weeks now. Which, I'm used to that, JB has always been the type to run every conclusion through testing twice before saying anything, three times if there's something weird about it. Dad and the professor are almost as careful. But now Kaitlin is calling an emergency meeting, which is a lot more worrying.

The lab is out in the middle of nowhere– wait, let me back up. The entrance to the lab is in the middle of nowhere. Like, it's a giant triangular arch standing in a field, okay? I'm pretty sure most of Crossworld City thinks it's some sort of art installation. Apparently the lab itself is in another dimension? JB tried to explain this to me once by describing a water balloon full of soap bubbles, but I got lost when he started talking about how a sphere would look to something living on a sheet of paper. Finally he gave up and told me to basically think of it as normal space having sort of a secret compartment in it– it was absolutely wrong, but it would give me the right images anyway.

When we started, the lab itself was basically a room full of computer equipment and one bench for materializing things and occasionally doing emergency medical procedures on idiot Troopers who may have overextended themselves. There was a wheeled chair for JB to type on the computers, but other than that, Professor Hart was in the computer systems, what did we need other furniture for? When Dad came back from Norway, he kind of put his foot down, and now the lab has a conference room with a table and chairs, and even a mini-fridge. It's mainly full of bottled water and treats for Jeb, but still.

I was the last one to arrive, since I'd had to finish up teaching my class at the dojo first. We'd bailed on Tao so many times during the three years we were Troopers, JB and I'd agreed that the only reason we'd call off was for natural disasters or being too sick to teach. (Tao had a strict 'no spreading the plague' rule in the dojo.) JB had a folder– that wasn't good. Dad had another folder. Kaitlin had a folder of her own. Three-folder meeting, never a good sign. I took my seat at the table as Jeb hopped up into the one next to me. It says a lot about our lives that nobody finds the sight of a Redbone Coonhound poring over a file full of printouts silly anymore.

Kaitlin and JB exchanged glances, and he motioned for her to go first. She sighed and opened her folder.

"Okay, one of my informants called today with a warning– apparently somebody's been quietly looking into news of the weird from Crossworld City. Started two weeks ago Monday. Not just news of the weird, either– apparently they got really interested in Ziktor Industries." She passed out several sheets of paper, which I saw were lists of various articles and subjects accessed by the mystery people.

"Which informant was this?" Dad asked, scanning the list.

"Ex-Khan, the hacker."

JB startled. "Wait. The one who does the flat-out bullshit cracking stuff?"

"I… I've heard you call it 'impossible' before," Kaitlin replied, blinking, "but 'bullshit' is new."

"He hacked my laptop, Kaitlin. When the modem was pulled out for repair and on the other side of the house! If you've got another word for it, I'm all ears."

Dad coughed a little, which I'm pretty sure meant he was trying not to laugh. "At any rate, you're sure he's reputable, Kaitlin?"

"Yes. He's been feeding me info for over two years now, and all of it's been legit. His preferred targets are generally US Military black projects– he's especially fond of airing the dirty laundry of a division known as the NID, I think it's something personal. But he was apparently a fan of the VR Troopers, picked me because he thought my stories showed a connection to them."

"Does he know?" I asked, worried.

Kaitlin shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm their media outlet, which, true enough as far as it goes. I don't think he'd say anything if he did figure it out, though."

"He wasn't able to trace the searches, either, I see," Professor Hart commented from his monitor on the wall.

"No, whoever it was broke up their trail pretty efficiently. And they may not be interested in the Troopers at all, there was a lot of focus on Ziktor, both business-wise and personal. Especially the reports on what happened to the Ziktor Industries building."

I couldn't help but grimace. I was still reliving that whole mess in my dreams after hard days– half-dead on the ground, hearing Grimlord's rasping laughter in my ears. I'd taken one last shot at that goddamn crystal, full of Dad's stolen knowledge and memories, more out of spite than anything else. I hadn't even been sure I could hit it, the world was going dark so fast. But I had, shattered it into fragments, and the power reaction had… It had been bad.

And then I'd had to crawl to the emergency stairs, armor fading in and out as I pretty much flopped down like a fish for ten floors, past the firebreak that was supposed to protect Ziktor's private floors from anything that might affect the rest of the company. Apparently it made a pretty good blast shield from the other side, too.

I looked up to see everybody staring at me– crap, I'd gotten lost in my thoughts again.

"Um. Sorry, guys. It could just be that they don't buy the faulty transformer excuse. I'm not sure anybody bought it, it was just the first thing they could think of that would stop them having to ask questions."

"They almost certainly don't buy it, but I kind of doubt they're gonna leave it at that," JB replied. He shot a look at Kaitlin to make sure she was done, then continued.

"So, the same day the searches started, the lab's sensors registered a major reality breach, here in Crossworld. Downtown, in fact, across from Crossworld First National. I went to check it out, didn't find anything except fading traces of the kind of energy we used to pick up from Grimlord's bots when they came through."

Kaitlin frowned. "Any sign of a trail? Disruptions? Six-foot toaster knocking over a bodega?"

"Very funny. Nothing I could pick up, no news stories. It's like something came across the barrier and just… disappeared."

Scratching behind one ear, Jeb looked thoughtful. "Seems to me, ol' Perce and I both made it to Grimlord's place and back just fine on a few occasions. What if whatever came across was supposed to be here, not there?"

JB and Dad looked at each other, and Dad made a face. "Yes, that would explain it. If somebody was stuck in that dimension and found a way through– it's not surprising it would come back to Crossworld, the energy gradient is much smaller here."

Yeah, despite referring to "virtual reality" and the "reality barrier," the "virtual" part is pretty much just because our main way of accessing it has always been through computers. It's actually a lot older than that, and apparently as much magic as technology, but I'm a jock. The most intellectually taxing thing I ever did was that time I coached my old high school football team for about three weeks. I leave the science and technical stuff to people smarter than me… which is everybody in this room with the exception of the dog. And some days I wonder about the dog.

"So our best guess is that somebody or something came across the barrier here, and it got the attention of some mysterious organization that promptly started looking into Crossworld to figure out what's weird around here," JB summarized.

Kaitlin nodded. "That'd fit what I read in the email Ex-Khan said. The timing's right, anyway. Ziktor industries going kaboom is probably one of the weirdest things in recent history, so."

I sighed, and rubbed my face. "Okay, not much we can do except keep our eyes open on that, so… Dad, you want to drop the last bombshell on us?"

He gave me a wry smile. "Not too much more concrete information in this one, either. A bunch of former Ziktor Industries properties reverted to the city after the company's… unfortunate dissolution. Recently, several of them have been bought up by out of town firms. Several of those places are still unstable from the activities Ziktor carried out there, so I had some concerns and checked on the buyers. After jumping through a fairly ridiculous number of shell companies, all of the purchases eventually tracked back to a single source, a law firm based in Los Angeles.

"The name, it seems, is Wolfram and Hart."

Owari

Ex-Khan, his idiots, and all associated indicia are property of Tsuburaya Productions and DIC…