Author's Notes: Real quick friends, I've been holding onto some chapters for awhile to tweak a few things for the rest of the story but I think it's finally ok to release them. I'll be releasing the other chapter tomorrow hopefully :) Thanks for your support and reviews! :D

Pale moonlight lit the road. Woody traveled quickly and quietly as he made his way towards the port town. Thoughts of Bo all alone in the desert ebbed at his mind, keeping a steady lump in his throat. But the images of Jessie that came to his head were much worse, and motivated him to press forward.

At last small pinpricks of light met his vision. Unfortunately for the cowboy, one of those lights happened to be a bright green. Star Command had set up a patrol around the town, probably to stay on the lookout for Bo.

The cowboy considered his options. If he could infiltrate the town, maybe even go undercover, he'd perhaps hear rumors of what had happened with Jessie.

Woody snuck closer to edge of town, being cautious to stay low to the ground. It was extremely dark, but there wasn't much to hide behind should he be discovered. As his vision grew clearer, he recognized the patrol to be a robot by the way it was moving. He couldn't exactly take out metal. There was also the possibility of night-vision...

"Who goes there?"

Too late.

Adrenaline shot through Woody's veins. He either had to take on the Ranger, or run. Before logical thoughts could reach his mind, the cowboy's legs took off at a sprint. The robot screamed as Woody tackled him, wrestling him to the dusty ground. The robot was smaller, and didn't seem to be putting up much of a fight.

"Woody!"

For the first time, the cowboy got a good look at the Ranger that he had in a tight hold.

"XR?" he sputtered.

"Have you lost your mind?! Get off me!" the familiar little robot said, squirming underneath the weight of the sheriff.

Woody started to loosen his grip a bit, but then immediately clamped down harder.

"How do I know I can trust you? How do I know that McNairy didn't turn you against us?"

XR chuckled nervously. "Ok yeah, I can see how you'd think that because he tried to. Had me plugged into his mainframe and everything. I had to pretend that it worked so he wouldn't turn me into scrap metal."

"Prove it," Woody spat.

The robot studied him for a moment. "Your sister is alive."

The cowboy paused. "Where is she?"

"Buzz has her. They're taking her back to Star Command, they came through here earlier. We were betrayed."

"By who?"

XR heaved a sigh. "Commander Nebula. He's been pulling strings for McNairy all along."

The cowboy relaxed his grip just a bit. Nebula. He'd heard Nebula's name pop up in the conversation between McNairy and Porkchop, but at the time thought nothing of it. Woody finally peeled himself off of XR to sit and contemplate.

The robot, finding himself free, sat up as well mimicking Woody's thinking pose.

"It doesn't make any sense," the sheriff thought aloud. "Why would Nebula…"

"Remember the day Bo was taken by Porkchop? When I was plugged into McNairy's systems to be reconfigured, there was a report filed by Nebula all about it. It said that before you and Mira escaped the conference center, Nebula gave you a code. He knew it would trigger the explosion that could have taken your life," XR told him sadly. "I just never thought that Pop could be capable of anything like this."

"Maybe whatever they did to Buzz… they did that to Nebula too," Woody surmised.

The two pondered on the thought for a while. It made the most sense at the time. Although Woody had not had much previous experience with the old Commander, Nebula had always been the picture of loyalty in Buzz's head. The cowboy recognized Buzz had been deceived before, but he felt confident in this occasion that Nebula had to have been brainwashed.

The two were pulled out of their thoughts when they heard XR's communicator crackle.

"Everything quiet over there unit 243?" asked the scratchy voice that came out of the robot's wrist.

"Uh, yeah! Everything is hunky dory over on this side. No signs of movement," XR babbled quickly.

"243?" Woody whispered.

"They don't call us by our names anymore…"

"How did this happen? I know that McNairy is in charge, but there have to be other Space Rangers who know something is wrong. Were they all indoctrinated? What about the rest of team Lightyear?!"

"Shhh…" XR hushed the cowboy, pointing to his communicator.

Once again the crackly voice spoke up. "Excellent. Please report back to base at once." The robot closed his communicator.

"Is that bad?" Woody asked anxiously.

"No, they're just trading out shifts. Listen, you've got to get out of here. They've got a tight guard on everything that happens in this town. Nearly all the locals have been forcibly relocated," XR told him while standing up and brushing dust off his casing.

"I'm not leaving until I can figure out a way to get my Sister back," Woody stated simply while also standing up. "McNairy will kill her, if Buzz doesn't first."

"It won't do any good if you get yourself caught too."

Woody visibly looked hurt. He would have preferred to be the one caught.

XR sighed. "I can try to smuggle you in, but I can't guarantee you won't be discovered."

Baby blue eyes flittered open.

Bo groaned. Her head was throbbing, matching the beat of her heart. She found herself on the ground amid the vast desert sand and rock. It was early in the morning and still relatively cool in temperature, and yet the blonde cursed herself for sleeping too long. She had originally intended to only rest for a few hours so that she would be able to do the bulk of the travel in the nighttime. In a few hours it would become unbearably hot again, making the trip more difficult.

Picking herself off the ground proved to be more difficult than it should have been. Bo shifted her leg, which she was sure was bending in a way it wasn't supposed to. After many strenuous moments, she was finally able to hoist herself up.

She was not worried about losing her way. Those five empty years in which she existed merely a husk of the woman she once was were spent travelling the area extensively. Bo was concerned, however, about her lack of energy and hydration. The day previous she had stopped at the well outside of Barkings, but she still hadn't eaten anything since having escaped Star Command. Her stomach gurgled with protest with every step that she took.

The heat settled in all at once, only further aggravating her intense headache.

Hours crawled by, and Bo hadn't seen another town since Barkings. When she finally saw the outline of buildings, she breathed a sigh of relief. She tried to remember which towns were near to Barkings, but she couldn't place what this one was. It was extremely familiar…

Piercing scarlet fire that matched the ferocity of the sun appeared from nowhere, licking the buildings up in seconds.

"Not this again... " Bo murmured under her breath. She shut her eyes tight, but it didn't matter. Like lightning flashes, images were burned into her mind of her old town and its remains.

The blonde was not aware that she had fallen to the ground. Her head was still pounding. It felt like her eyes were going to pop out due to the incessant throbbing, like someone was using her cranium as a drum.

She opened her eyes again, finding the town gone and only empty desert before her again. Bo grabbed her head.

Pounding. Throbbing. Panging. Aching. Why wouldn't it stop?

Bo lacked the strength to get up again. She crumbled there under the blistering heat of the sun, only conscious of the fact that her head was about to explode. She definitely did not notice the shadows that approached her body, guns in hand.