*****???*****

     Nene sat up, her head hurt. "Ohhhh." she moaned. "Mackie?" she shook
her head. "Hey, where am I?" she stood up. 
     It looked like a rainforest, it sounded like a rainforest, it even
smelled like a rainforest. How the hell could she be here? If the
coordinates were off a little she would have ended up no further than the
base of the tower. How could she be in a rainforest? 
     Maybe it was just Linna and Priss playing tricks again. Maybe this
whole thing had been a trick. "Alright guys. The virtual reality was fun
for a while but now it's starting to get me mad..." 
     She waited for Priss or Linna to pop into the VR World and laugh at
her, or at least send a hello message through the system. "Guys? Guys!?!
Come on, this isn't funny! Guys!?!?" 
     She heard a rustling behind her. Aha! Priss! "I see you there Priss.
Don't try and hide from me." 
     "Lieutenant Collins. Identify yourself." 
     Nene peered into the underbrush. "This isn't a dream, is it?" 
     "Identify yourself." 
     "Nene Romanova." 
     "Romanova! Oh." A man in a hardsuit emerged from the bushes. He
bowed. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't know what you looked like." 
     Nene stared at the hardsuit. "What's going on?" 
     Collins looked at her. "What are you doing without your hardsuit?
Maybe I should take you back to the base?" 
     "Yes. Maybe you better." Nene whispered. 

*****Base?*****

     Nene looked around at the underground base. Where the hell had this
phaser set her? Terminator 2? People were wandering through streets in
this huge undergorund city. Collins led her through a series of buildings
until he came to a group of officers. 
     "Collins, with Mrs. Romanova to see the admiral." The officers
suddenly stood, saluted, and moved out fo the way. They continued down
the hallway until they came to a door. Collins knocked. 
     "Come in." A voice. 
     Collins opened the door. "Ms. Vision, Mrs. Romanova to see you." He
saluted and left. 
     Reika Chang swiveled in her chair. Both Nene and Reika gasped.
"Nene, you look so young. Plastic surgery?" Reika joked. It had been
Reika's voice she heard, but this voice was so different. Of course,
Reika's looks had changed even more. She wore a patch over her right eye.
Her clothing left her left shoulder exposed, and Nene could see a scar
along it, which ran deeper into her chest, until the clothing hid it. 
     "What's going on here?" Nene asked. 
     "You look just like you used to how many...a dozen years ago?" 
     "What? What year is it? Where are we?" 

*****???*****

     Sylia opened her eyes and sat straight up. Her helmet had cracked.
She threw it down, and shielded herself from the sun. She turned and saw
Mackie lying next to her. "Hey." she poked him. "Get up." she shook him a
little. Mackie started to waken. 
     "Halt, humans!" She turned. The biggest boomer she ever saw was
standing right behind her. Sylia's lips moved to say something, but
nothing came out. 
     The boomer raised it's arm cannon. It powered up. "Hardsuit class:
Unknown. Possible Risk to this unit: Unkown. Conclusion: Terminate."
Suddenly it froze. 
     "This unit detects an unusally large amount of ions detected in the
area. Possibility: Cloaked hardsuits." 
     "What?" Sylia didn't understand. Mackie was now wide awake, sitting
right next ot her. "What's going on?" he whispered. 
     "Not bad." Linna's voice came out of nowhere. Suddenly, a hardsuit
shimmered into view. Dozens of other suits appeared. 
     "Possible Risk to this Unit: Large Damage/Destruction. Conclusion:
Retreat and report." The boomer took off. 
     Linna's hardsuit ran up to Sylia and Mackie. "Sylia? Is it really
you? After all these years, and we thought you were dead." 
     "Who are you?" Sylia whispered. 
     The faceplate of the suit went up. "Don't you remember me, Sylia?
It's Linna." 

*****???*****

     "This is the true look of a victor." Largo looked down at Priss. He
attacked. Priss was beaten back. Largo knocked her down. His minions
arrived. 
     "I want power...Power enough to lay this bastard low..." 
     Priss woke up. What a realistic dream. It was so real... 
     Priss struggled to stand. Where was she? She looked around. Route
California. The AD Police tower. The Genom Tower. She was in Megatokyo
alright, but it looked so much worse. It was if a third Great Earthquake
had leveled the city again. She launched herself into the air. The entire
city seemed to have been almost completely destroyed. If it weren't for
the few telltale signs of Genom and the AD Police tower, she would have
no idea this was Megatokyo. What happened? 
     "See, I leave for one minute..." She joked to herself. 
     Priss launched herself in the only direction she could go. To the
only place that was standing more than a floor high. The tower. She
landed gently, and looked around. 
     "Priss?" 
     Priss turned around. 
     "Commander McNichol. At your service." 
     "Leon!?!?!" 
     "I must say I'm surprised to see you here. But my sensors tell me
your not a boomer. So what's going on?" 
     "I was going to ask the same question." 
     "Come on, I'll take you to Nene." 

*****???*****

     Linna felt an incredible pain in the back. As if she had just
slammed into a wall. She looked back. She had, but what had made her move
like that? 
     She looked back. The tower! She was in Megatokyo. She looked around.
No. She was with another tower. She bent down to look at a small sign on
the street. German. 
     She was in Germany. But this wasn't the same Germany as on
Earth...What was she thinking, it had to be the same one...didn't it? It
was the same, and yet, it was so different. 
     She heard a small noise. She started following it. She followed it
down below the tower. She froze as soon as she saw the small room. A
person looking a lot like Dr. Stingray was laughing with some others in
the middle of the room. What was going on here? 

*****Johannesburg, South Africa-1507hours, March 5, 2047*****

     "This is incredible." Nene whispered. 
     "Amazing." Reika said. 
     "So you come from a world where Priss died?" 
     "And you come from one where she lived?" 
     Nene had been talking with Reika for almost three hours. Reika said
she had only wanted to be called Vision now, since it was so much more
hopeful, but more importantly, she had told Nene where she was. 
     Nene was thirteen years in the future it what would be an alternate
reality. There seemed to be only one difference between her universe and
Vision's: Priss' tower fight. The day in 2033 had a dramatic impact on
the timeline. In the alternate reality , Priss' motoroid had
malfunctioned, as a result, she had never recieved her new suit, and
died. 
     This set off a chain of events: Vision joined the Knight Sabers,
Sylia subsequently fell under Largo's control during the boomer
revolution, and the Megatokyo reactor was used as blackmail for the
entire world. 
     In a desperate attempt the Knight Sabers had finally saved Sylia.
Sylia had barely rejoined the Knight Sabers for a few months when she
died at the hands of the first ever G-class boomer. 
     Nene also learned that there were also 34-C's in this timeline,
along with the M-class, a larger-than-Doberman boomer who was the routine
patrollers for Largo's forces. The G-class were the size of the Sears
Tower and nearly invulnerable. 
     "So what is this place?" 
     "It's called a sect. It's unsafe for humans to live aboveground
anymore, with all the boomers, so we made these underground cities." 
     "How many are there?" 
     "That we know of? They change every day. Yesterday there were
twenty-three." 
     "Twenty-three? The entire human population lives in twenty-three
cities." 
     "What the human-boomer war didn't get, the boomers hunted down after
they won." 
     "What about the rest of the Knight Sabers?" 
     "Linna, Nene, and Mackie are still somewhere. I left Linna back in
one of the sects in the US before I came here." 
     "My friends will come looking for me. With the other Knight Sabers
here, we might have a chance of beating Largo." 
     "Beating Largo? Nene, we can fool the soliders into thinking we have
a chance, but in the end, it's a question of when the boomers will win,
not if." 
     "Look, we were working on a way to move through walls and stuff, I
think we accidentally discovered something much more important. This is a
gateway between universes, and time! We could rewrite history if we just
had another machine." 
     Vision's eyes seemed to become a little more hopeful. "There are
only three sects in the US: Dallas, Miami, and Seattle." 
     "Then we'll go as soon as you teach me how to use these new suits." 

*****Texas, United States-1609hours, March 5, 2047*****

     "Besides us, there are two other US sects, Seattle and Miami." 
     "Where are the other sects?" 
     Sylia, Mackie, and the alternate Linna sat around a table. They had
exchanged information about their worlds already. Mackie remained silent
as Sylia and Linna talked. 
     This alternate Linna was definatly different from her own. She had
long black hair, almost passing her hips. She carried a small scar under
her left eye. A new air of authority hovered around 'Admiral' Yamazaki. 
     "Two in Antartica. One by the North Pole. One in Canada, one in
Mexico. Three in South America. Two in Africa. Two in the Middle East.
Four in mainland Europe, plus one in London. One in Megatokyo. One in
Germany. One in Austraila." 
     "If Nene is here she'll already have been taken in by one of the
sects." 
     "If she's not dead." 
     "I'm not willing to concede that yet. How long will it take to get
confirmation from the sects as to whether Nene is there or not?" 
     "We can have answers from the US, Canada and Mexico sects within 24
hours. After that it will take some time." 
    "That will knock out four other sects, we'll wait for confirmation." 

*****Megatokyo Tower Ruins-1100hours, March 5, 2047*****

     "What do you mean 'That you know of'?" 
     "Well, it's possible there are some sects that aren't connected to
our network." Leon leaned back in his chair. 
     Priss wasn't taking the loss of her alternate very well, as if it
were some reflection on her fighting skills. She was also a little mad
that the "Nene" Leon had mentioned had not been the Nene she had been
looking for. 
     Priss now looked across the table at Nene, now eight years older
that her. She had let her hair grow a little longer. The girlish quality
was gone from her, whether the disrupted timeline or age had taken that
from her, Priss didn't know. 
     She turned to Leon. He didn't look any different than he had before.
He seeemed to be the same guy who she had ran out on during the first
superboomer incident back in '32. The same guy who sat polishing his gun
at his desk. The same guy who meddled into Genom's and the Knight Sabers'
business. The guy who wanted to be a major player but was only a pawn
because he worked for a puny orginization. This Leon, however, seemed to
have lost his joking quality. 
     "So how did you get involved in this?" 
     "The Revolution took a piece of everybody. I had gone to Dallas to
find Reika in hopes of finding the Knight Sabers, but I found neither.
When I got back, I found out Daley was dead. That's when I promised
myself I'd get the son-of-a-bitch who started this." 
     "So what do we do?" Priss turned back to Nene. She felt disgusted at
having to ask her, and yet, she felt like it was her place to be under
Nene, a feeling she hadn't ever felt before. 
     A feeling she hoped she would never feel again. 
     "Lieutenant." she called. 
     "Admiral?" A young man, who couldn't be more than sixteen, opened
the door. 
     "Alert the other sects that Priss from an alternate reality is here.
Tell them that we will be in Germany." 
     "Yes sir." 
     "Germany?" Priss wondered as the lieutenant closed the door. 
     "Yes." 
     "Who is there?" 
     "Mackie." 

*****Berlin, Germany-1356hours, March 5, 2047*****

     "Mackie." Linna still couldn't believe it. Mackie looked just like
his father, without a mushache, of course. The only difference that she
could find was that this Mackie had a considerably better build than
either Sylia's father or the Mackie from her universe. 
     "So. Let's assume Linna's not crazy and this really is happening.
What do we do?" Mackie smiled. 
     A lieutenant commander, or at least that's what he looked like
answered. "With all due respect, captain, I think we should do nothing.
Tell the other sects she's here. Let them come to us." 
     "No. We've got ot unify the sects. One big fighting force. We're
going to have Sylia and Priss back. You know, they said that nobody could
best Priss in fair one-on-one combat. With them on our side, we can't
lose." 
     "If we put all our people together we run the risk of getting
EVERYONE killed." another put in. 
     "All right! All right." Mackie tried to quiet them down. "As it is
we don't know if Linna's friends even materialized in the same timeframe
as her, we don't even know if they're on the same astral plane. Linna
said Sylia hadn't finished keying in the formula for the phaser, they
could be scattered anywhere in any number of galaxies. Do any of you know
the theory of IDIC?" 
     The rest remained silent. "Infinite Diversity in Infinite
Circumstances. For every possible thing that can happen in the universe,
a new one is created with that one millisecond changed. In the end,
thousands upon thousands of universes can pile up o n each other. What
are the chances that all of Linna's friends landed here?" 
     "I guess that depends on how much got entered into the machine
before they phased..."