Red woke with a jolt. How long had he been asleep? He examined his surroundings as the events of the day before began to return to him. He seemed to be in a large cavern that showed an opening at one end that led to the Undernet which was currently cast in the bluish shades of near dawn. Everything that had happened seemed like such a blur, but the hard facts remained.

Arrow was being held prisoner in Red's place.

Red gritted his teeth. This whole situation was his fault, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it. Not only was he a traitor to his entire race—for lack of a better term of course since the Navis were the people to adopt him and because he was at least Navi-like—but he was a cannibalistic monster who was being chased for the crimes that he couldn't help but commit. He felt hollow and miserable as he let his head sink to rest on his knees. It felt like he was sharing his body with some foul demon that took control of his moments of personal weakness, and Red could not help but wonder what might happen if he were to lose himself completely—if he were to eventually become the demon… Or worse, what if this monster was the real being and he was just clinging to the hope that he was not a monster.

Red shook his head to rid himself of the horrible thoughts, though he did hug his legs a little tighter. Another realization had just hit him. He was all alone in the cave when he should be accompanied by the two female Navis who had traveled through the curtains with him. Had they abandoned him? Surely they had out of fear that he would consume them like he had done his other former comrades. But then a figure appeared in the cave entrance and Red lifted his head hopefully.

"It's a good thing you're up. We all need to decide what to do next, so come on outside," spoke Trill in a quiet voice.

When she had retreated back outside, Red stared at the place she had stood in slight disbelief. Suddenly he remembered that the two other Navis would be waiting for him outside, and he almost tripped over himself in his rush to join them, glad that he was not utterly alone. He did not care so much if they hated him, just that they had not abandoned him. He made his way out of the cave and found Trill and the other orange Navi sitting a little further down on the slopes of rock and sand.

"—both ironic and unsettling, but we can't deal with that right now anyways," Trill finished, and she looked up as Red came within earshot.

"Uh… Hi, there. My name's Red," he said towards the orange Navi after there had been a strained silence.

"I'm Gale," the small orange Navi said shyly, but still friendly.

Red's eyes widened. He had heard of Gale. She was a high commander of the Abyssian army, though why she was with them, he didn't know. She was actually a regular star of adventure stories around the base, though no one had seen her in quite some time. In fact, this was the first time that Red had ever laid eyes on her. He had always guessed that she was too busy to go out in public, but now that she was in the company of two wanted Navis and not attacking them, the facts began looking like a little more than not wanting to mingle with commoners.

"And now that introductions have been made," Trill sighed, giving a wave of her hand, "we need to get down to business."

Red opened his mouth to argue that he only had a tiny piece of an idea of what was going on, but was cut off by Trill saying, "Calm down. All in good time, which we don't exactly have by the way. Things will be explained as we go through this."

Sensing that he really should just shut his mouth and pay attention until asked to speak, Red did just that.

"Gale, how many days back do you remember?" Trill asked, turning to the orange Navi.

"Four," Gale replied simply.

"Hmm… It seems that these cycles might be over. We won't know for sure though until a couple of more days," Trill said thoughtfully.

"Forgive my interruption, but what cycle are we talking about exactly?" Red asked, still confused.

"It seems that Gale has been suffering from some strange and cyclical form of amnesia in which all the memories that she builds up are wiped from her system after a certain period of time. The period of time between memory wipes has been decreasing for a while. The last one she experienced was four days ago. And three days before that another one occurred," Trill explained.

"Wait, I thought you said decreasing intervals," Red said. He wasn't the smartest, but he knew the difference in decreasing and increasing. Last time he checked, four was greater than three. Perhaps he had misunderstood.

Trill shook her head.

"No, I said it right," she insisted. "The memory wipes were decreasing in the amount of time between. However, as you have just so kindly pointed out, this time ruins the pattern. Hence the reason that I believe that the memory wipes will now either go away gradually or disappear altogether. This might mean that Gale will recover some of her older memories."

Gale smiled a little at the thought.

"Oh, I guess that makes sense," Red said. He wanted to question further things like what caused the memory lapse, but pushed it in the back of his mind. If it was important, he would find out in the information Trill was about to give to him, and if it wasn't he could always ask about it later.

"Now, as to why Gale is here with us when we are so obviously running from the authorities," Trill said, "is another matter entirely."

"For some reason, though I am not certain as to why, I think that I would have been taken into custody if I had not escaped with both of you even though I have no memory of conspiring with anyone or committing any serious crimes," Gale said, looking off into the distance as if she believed her memories to be somewhere over the horizon waiting to be recaptured.

Trill nodded grimly.

"You haven't, but there is something that we all have in common," Trill explained.

"In common?" Red asked dumbly. So far, none of this was making much sense.

"You see, none of us are originally from this world," Trill answered.

"Come again?" Red asked, unsure of whether or not his ears were playing tricks on him.

Trill turned to face him fully with serious regard. "You heard me correctly. Now let me tell you a story which took place a very long time ago…"

OOO (flashback)

Trill wandered through this new and strange world observing the barren landscape. No songbirds like she had encountered in other worlds were residing here. No animals. No people. In fact there were no signs of life, the only sounds coming from her boots scraping dirt and knocking small windworn pebbles aside. This world had to be inhabited, she knew, because she had seen the cities in other areas. However these peoples tended to live in tight groups to fend off the monster 'viruses'. But there were no viruses here, no people, no anything.

This is why the anomaly in the not-so-far distance struck Trill as interesting. She approached what seemed to be no more than a gap in the scenery, a tear in the dimensions of this world. And it was through this gap that she could hear faint voices, so quiet they could be whispers. Trill grasped the frayed edges of the tear and gingerly pried them apart so as the peer inside.

;;;

Blues held his side as oil continued to seep out as synthetic blood. Subduing the rogue robot who had destroyed Rock had taken a larger toll on the red robot than he had anticipated even with Forte's help. Dr. Hikari was safe, and that was all that really mattered, but Roll…

"You couldn't keep out of this, could you?" he muttered to Roll's prone body through gritted teeth. Her sightless eyes stared dimly at her lower half that lay in the far corner, so far from the rest of her body. "I suppose everybody's gotta die sometime though, you know? I'm just glad it wasn't by core malfunction."

Seeing as Blues was currently sharing only the company of some dead robots and a capsule filled with a stasis robot, he was not expecting to hear another voice in answer.

"So you are still alive?" the voice said from the computer monitor.

Once Blues had overcome his shock, he answered, "In a sense I suppose."

"In a sense?" the voice asked with amusement. "Either you are or you aren't. What are you, if I may ask?"

Blues blinked behind his chipped and scratched shades. Dare he answer? If this was a potential enemy there was no way he could fight it on this low amount of power. "I'm a robot," he found himself saying.

"And you are breathing are you not?" the woman's voice asked again.

"In a sense," he answered, a little annoyed at the questioning.

A laugh came from the monitor at his answer, though he could not imagine why in this grave situation. "Yet again, you either are or you are not. If you are breathing, then I must assume you are alive still."

Blues did not answer, but he did allow a shudder of pain as sparks leapt from his wound.

"Can you stand?"

"What?" Blues hissed in confusion.

The voice answered, this time with more urgency and less amusement.

"I think I can help you, but I need to know if you can stand," the voice explained patiently.

Blues huffed, though his wound protested against the action. "I don't need your help. Just leave me be."

"Oh, but I think you do," the voice answered. "You seem… unusual." Blues looked toward the monitor voice in surprise. "I don't think your life should end here."

"Can you help Roll instead?" Blues asked after a moment of thought.

"Who is this 'Roll'?" the voice asked.

"I would die soon even if I weren't this damaged as it is. If you want to revive someone, your best bet is Roll," he replied, indicating the damaged robot before him. He only assumed that the person in the monitor could see him.

And apparently the person in the monitor could, because she seemed to understand him. "Very well," she sighed. "I will help you both, that is, if you can make it over to me."

Blues clenched his teeth and rose to his knees, ignoring all of the warnings flashing in front of his eyes. "Alright now what?" he ground out.

"Oh my, your body really is quite damaged," the voice observed much to Blues' annoyance. "Now I need you to retrieve that other robot's mind chip and connect it to the computer."

The robot hissed his discomfort as he slowly drug himself over to his fallen 'sister'. Carefully he flipped open a plate at the base of her skull and removed the large chip. It had sustained a little damage since Roll had received such a large blow to her head when she had been cut in half. He finally reached the computer and pulled himself up using the desktop, grasping several cables which fell down with him as he collapsed. With shaking hands, he snapped the mind chip to the cable.

"Alright it's connected," he sighed.

"Tsk, a little damaged, but I think I can work with this," the voice hummed.

"Where-where am I?" Blues heard another voice ask from beyond the monitor.

He couldn't believe his ears. "Roll?"

"Blues, is that you?" the Roll voice gasped.

"I hate to interrupt this touching reunion, but we haven't got much time here," the other voice said. "I need you to connect yourself to this computer now."

Blues fumbled with the mess of cables before finally pulling out the right one and connecting it to the access point in his chest. Gradually his breathing units ceased to function properly, warnings flashing a blaring red through the gathering darkness around his line of sight.

Is this what it feels like to die? he wondered. Nonsense. Dying would require one to be alive in the first place, he realized with a last wistful sigh. Yet he still wondered if this was similar to what a human would feel at death's call. He often wondered where 'he' would go—where 'Blues' would go—when his systems finally ceased to function. He let his head fall to view the capsule containing a tall robot with yellow hair. With the chip Blues had implanted, would this robot awaken to a peaceful world, and be able to live in peace with that new world? Would this robot feel alive?

Blues ceased to wonder as he felt a pulling sensation and his eyes saw no more, continuing their eternal deathly stare at the stasis capsule on which was crudely scrawled 'Zero'. When his eyes next opened, he would be elsewhere with the mysterious voice.

OOO

"I still do not know what caused this tear, but I firmly believe it was my destiny to meet this robot," Trill finished.

Red stretched from his seated position. "And what became of these robots?"

"Formerly known as Blues and Roll, I think you know them now," Trill said, glancing at Gale still sitting beside her, smiling serenely at the sunrise. "Gale's malfunctions do not surprise me given how damaged she was when I received her data."

"And Arrow," Red finished thoughtfully, gazing in the direction of Net City where could be seen skyscrapers on the horizon.

Trill stood and folded her arms also training her eyes on the city buildings.

"Then what am I?" Red asked quietly.

Trill hummed to herself in thought for a moment. "I can only assume that you are formed from raw data caused by the collision of these two dimensions."

There was silence for a moment, and then, "I think I might know how to get him back."

Both looked to Gale who stood as well.

"He made his decision," Trill said with a shake of her head. "There really isn't much we can do. Besides, they already have his data, so they can do whatever they like with it."

"True," Gale replied with a pause. "But we should rescue him for reasons other than his identity being discovered."

"That's too dangerous, Gale, and utterly worthless," Trill argued.

"Either help me, or be on your way," Gale snapped, facing the blue Navi, her eyes burning with determination.

The two Navis stared each other down for a few tense moments each thinking her way was the right one. True, Trill had grown unnaturally attached to Arrow as time had gone on, but she knew that there was no chance of rescuing him. Arrow in the possession of humans was just as bad as Red in their possession. Gale knew that despite Trill's optimism towards her condition, there was not much time left for her. Slowly her mind was tearing apart from her data, and soon she would be gone completely. Before that time came, she would fight until her last breath to ensure that Arrow got his freedom.

"I'll help you," Red offered tentatively. Would she accept help from him after all that he had done?

The two women snapped out of their trance and regarded him with stony expressions. Finally it was Trill who decided to speak up.

"I do not know what it was about Net City that made you turn against us, and it is unwise to bring you there again," she said.

Red swallowed and nodded in understanding. It would not make sense to place them in even more danger than this mission already would. If he could help by staying behind, he would.

Trill breathed a heavy sigh of resignation. "Unfortunately we don't have many other options. We could use the help, and so we will risk it."

OOO

Sorry I have neglected this story. I really do have more of it to come! I keep dear to my heart, and as I was watching some of the old shows, I was motivated again to continue this story. Please excuse the shortness, but it's not over yet!

R&R