The Epic Interdimensional Misadventures of Sir and Friends

PART 1

Good day, my friend! This is the original, old version of The Real Phantom Portal. Read at your own risk! This isn't a bad story, but may be too goofy for your tastes. I GREATLY recommend skipping to Chapter 5! The Real Phantom Portal has a bit less ridiculous humor, so if you want the full, original experience, you're totally welcome to read this story too.

I am here to tell you a story. An unusual, really long story, about a strange group of friends. This certain group of friends will feel betrayal, feel desire, and feel loss and pain... But most of all, they will feel love. They will experience epic thrills unlike no other, and perhaps even stop an Interdimensional Rift in Space! But where will this story begin? Perhaps it will begin in the very home of the strange wolf creature named Sir who started it all.

Prologue - What is a Chimera, anyway?

Alright, before I let you meet him, I want to clear some stuff up. A chimera is not always a lion/goat/dragon/snake hybrid. Those lion/goat/dragon/snake hybrids are from Greek mythology. A chimera can actually be any living thing that is mixed with parts of a different living thing.

Griffon - The griffon is a chimera, usually made of a lion and an eagle. Now people could argue it is merely a hybrid, but just ignore those crazy idiots. To me, its a chimera. Griffons range in size from the size of a domestic house cat, to the size of a full grown lion.

Take this uhh, griffon... thing here as an example. I don't know what it is, actually. I assume its a griffon. I guess. I don't really know.

Okay, so griffons are the best example I could find of a chimera... Other than the chimera from Greek mythology, of course. Griffons have features of both eagles and lions, two entirely different living things, mashed together.

"But Sir! Those are only two different animals! Can't it just be considered a hybrid?"

Well, I'll find a different example of a chimera for you. Calm down.

You people are crazy.

Venus, the cat shown here, may not actually be a chimera. We may not ever find out if she is just super lucky to have that pattern, or if she was 2 different cats fused together before birth.

Anyways, to the right is another chimera.

"I read about her. Nobody can prove if she is a chimera or not. Plus, that's still only two animals."

I know that. Did you even read the caption of the image?

This is the best example of a chimera in biology, you know, when two different animals splice together before they are born?

Chimeras are hard to explain... I just don't want to confuse anybody. Every time I say something about "Sir is a chimera" people get mad at me. DATS NOT A CHIMERAA, They say. Yeah. They really say that.

"Can we just get on to the story? I know what a chimera is."

Fine...

Chapter 1 - Meet the Chimera Wolf

"OMG DATS NOT A CHIMERRRAAAA!!! DATS A DUM WOFLBOO."

No. Just no.

"I was just messing with you..."

Be quiet please! The story is starting.

Sir is a wolf. Not just any wolf, but a chimera wolf. He has bits and pieces from tons of different animals mixed with him.

"You just explained the entire prologue with that single sentence."

Be quiet! You are going to ruin the story!

"Sorry."

Can't a Chimera Wolf read his own autobiography aloud without being interrupted by some random quoted text?

"Actually, I don't think he can."

...

Let me start over.

Sir is a wolf. Not just any wolf, but a chimera wolf. He has bits and pieces from tons of different animals mixed with him. Even though he may look scary, or ugly, or bad, or nasty, or creepy, or disturbing, or threatening, or spooky, or mean, or rude, or disrespectful, he is actually a hero.

But he doesn't think he is a hero. The heroic things he does every day seem like nothing.

Well, because they are nothing. Sir doesn't really do anything, he doesn't even leave his house anymore.

Did I mention his house is larger than planet Mars and it is located in Interdimensional Space? I don't think I mentioned that. Of course, the whole thing isn't a house. Its more like an entire city, with parks and wildlife reserves. Sounds pretty nice, huh?

Its not. Its very lonely. The only thing keeping the house from crumbling down is a bunch of dumb scatterbrained robots who make repairs every so often. The entire house only has a few inhabitants, like Mighty, Prancing, and Little Bird. There could be other people in the house that Sir forgot about.

Why am I speaking in 3rd person? Would speaking in 1st person make it less confusing?

"No."

Ok then. Sir enjoys reading. But most of all he enjoys cacti. Yes. Cacti. Sir could even be considered the Lord, God, or King of Cacti. He spends so much time around cacti, that he is practically immune to thorns. Not a single thorn can pierce him. Its a nice thing, really. Even powerful mutant space dragons get the thorns in between their scales. But they don't hurt Sir. Sir is proud.

"What does Sir even look like?"

Oh! I completely forgot to describe him. He has mostly black fur, with some dark green-blue fur, and small white stripes. He doesn't have paws, though. All four of his legs are replaced with long eagle legs.

"Wait... Sir is a wolfaboo, isn't he?"

No. He isn't. THIS is a wolfaboo:

Canus Woflulus Sparkulus, the Common Wolfaboo, a subspecies of wolf

"Ok, then."

Anyways, Sir also wears black fedora and a red and white tie, along with a red and yellow blanket on his back.

"What do your eyes look like?"

Yellow. Completely yellow. No pupils, just yellow.

"Nice. What do you eat?"

Paper.

"Is that ALL you eat?"

Usually, yes.

"That sounds unhealthy for both you and the ecosystem..."

All the paper is 100% recycled recycled recycled paper. Its really good. I guess I also like to just eat regular food, but not as often.

"Are you done talking about yourself yet?"

You're the one who wanted the hear the story!

"I want to learn about the other characters too, you know."

Fine, then!

Lets move on to my best friend... Prancing.

Chapter 2 - Meet Prancing

I'm going to let Prancing write this entire chapter himself. I really hope he doesn't mess this up.

You didn't expect a miniature unicorn to be part of this story, did you?

Hey! I'm Prancing! I have worked with Sir for many years and we have come up with many helpful inventions and physics equations. We are built on making the Multiverse a better place and we have already brought hundreds of once "fictional" concepts to life.

My hobbies include reading, and playing with electricity and plasma. People say to not play with fire, but plasma and electricity are far more dangerous... But also far more fun. I've heard of pyromaniacs, but what about plasmaniacs? Plasma is the perfect energy source... And it's pretty.

...Alright Prancing that's enough talk about Plasma for now.

No, its not...

Yes, it is.

I don't even like Plasma that much. This is just some cheap character personality filler.

Liar.

Fine. I DO like plasma. But I like other things too. Like salads.

Is that it? Just salads?

I like tomatoes.

"But ponies can't eat tomatoes!"

Be quiet, random quoted text! My tomatoes are genetically modified!

*table flip*

Chapter 3 - Meet Mighty

We have met the chimera wolf and the unicorn, but we still have yet another character to meet...

Also, I'm not letting Mighty write this chapter, because when I let Prancing write his chapter, we just got in a fight.

A long long time ago, Sir was working at his restaurant, the Jamalot Diner. It was Fancy Friday, meaning everyone there had to wear their fanciest clothes, like really fancy clothes.

But one thing wasn't fancy... When Prancing, the waiter for that night, opened the door for someone, a dog ran in behind the visitor. It was a stray. It jumped onto the tables, knocking over glasses, bottles, and plates, and nearly knocking over the fancy Mira Ice Sculpture. The dog ate food off of plates, and caused chaos in the kitchen, but then Sir swiftly slipped a red and white striped scarf on the stray's neck.

"What did you do to me?" said the stray dog, in a higher pitched, slightly robotic, and English accent.

The whole restaurant was astonished! The stray dog was no longer jumping about; it was now calm and content, and most importantly, talking.

"Why. Just why. I was having a great time being mindless. Jumping on tables and stuff, you know.

Now I just want to sit down and chat. But that sounds boring."

Did I mention he and Prancing have English accents as well? Sir has a much lower pitched voice than Prancing- However Prancing also talks a little but faster, as if he was nervous. Sir usually sounds very calm, but this time he couldn't hold back his excitement.

"IT WORKS!! IT FINALLY WORKS!! PRANCING, DID YOU HEAR HIM? HE IS SPEAKING!!"

Prancing immediately responded, "Can we keep him?"

Sir and Prancing decided to name him Mighty. His full name is Mighty Snowywolf.

Mighty barely paid attention to his new family. He just stared blankly at the wall. He might have been a little too smart for his own body now.

Sir whispered to Prancing, "Its not just the scarf that lets him talk. The scarf only does the computing and the talking. There's a little microchip I put in his head too, that picks up small signals."

Prancing, with his eyes widened, slowly nodded with approval to Sir.

Mighty kept staring at the wall. Sir was worried he made this stray dog, which probably would have ended up in the pound anyway, smarter than it should be.

"There's just one test left.." Sir muttered to himself.

Sir held a cookie above his head.

"WHO WANTS A COOKIE?" he yelled.

Mighty, who was bored and unresponsive earlier, was now literally eating out of Sir's hands.

"You're my new Master!" said Mighty, with excitement.

And that's the story of how I met mighty!

A group of young wolves, bunnies, and tigers sat in a circle around Sir. Half of them were asleep, or drooling all over the floor.

Nobody cares for fun stories anymore, eh?

Chapter 4 - Meet the other guys who don't appear very often

And now we are going to meet the other guys who don't appear very often. Some may appear more often than others, or some may not appear until you least expect it. First up, we will meet the Tree.

Now, you are probably thinking,

Oh, that's not a tree! That's a brown giraffe with leaves on his head. There's no way he can be significant in any way!

Well, that's incorrect. This tree is a real tree! He changes with the seasons. The picture to the right depicts the tree in fall, when his leaves turn marvelous orange, yellow, and red.

This story is very unorganized and chaotic, by the way. I think whoever started reading it probably stopped reading by now.

"Hey, I'm the one supposed to be complaining!"

What about me?

All of you, cut it out! Italic text, go home. Bold text, go home. Random quoted text, go home! I'm tired of you ruining my story!

"Can we stay if we don't say anything?"

Fine. But don't cause any more trouble! Anyways, the tree doesn't talk very much but he can talk. Also keep in mind that was me talking, not Italic text talking. Gosh this is so hard to explain. You are probably confused out of your mind by now. Who would even want to read my story? And why? If you're actually reading this, can you tell me? Please? I'm worried nobody cares about me.

I care about you.

Thank you, Bold text. You're not heartless like Italic text and Random quoted text.

"I heard that!"

I told you to not cause any more trouble!

"Sorry."

Ok, we talked about Tree, now we will talk about the next the other guy who don't appear very often but is still part of the story...

Lieutenant Muddyjoy, aka Lieutenant Muddybuddy.

Lieutenant is in charge of maintaining the shrubberies around the parks in Sir's home. Also, for some reason, he always looks really tired, but he doesn't act tired. Maybe because he stays up until 1:00 A.M. every night, and gets up at 7:00 A.M. every morning. Maybe the only thing keeping him awake is all that coffee. He drinks about 6 cups every day. He heard something about coffee making you live longer...

Umm...

Now lets meet these two interesting brothers, Mister and Expert Happycamper.

Mister Happycamper is extremely timid. When he and Expert were young, they strayed from their herd. Little did they know that wolves, who acted like cats, were prowling the forest.

They were frolicking through a clearing, when a wolf jumped out of the bushes and said:

":leaps from bushes:"

Mister was not a happy camper. The wolf continued its speech,

":long cat tail whips around while she pulled her sword out:"

Both Mister and Expert were confused by the wolf- However, they learned that the wolf was saying her actions before they did them, giving them time to escape each attack.

":aims for legs:"

Expert jumped up, with the sword slashing below his feet.

But then the wolf said...

":aims for legs nn nm nd:"

She broke every bone in Experts legs with her blunt pirate sword, and Mister screamed.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Mister picked up Expert with all his strength, and took a deep breath.

Mister took ANOTHER deep breath... And prepared his lungs.

He said,

":uses dragon shout nn nm nd:"

A huge blue blast of energy was forced from Mister's mouth. The wolf lost her balance, and stumbled back into place. "You powerplayer!" she screamed, as she ran quickly back into the bushes.

Mister carried Expert back to where their herd used to be... All they found were sleeping deer with the red splash pattern.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

They screamed and screamed. The clan wolf cats had killed everyone they knew, with their deadly words like ":pulls out arrow from quiver and launches it at deer hart nm nn nd:" How did they get past the filter?

Anyways, Expert and Mister were scared almost to death. Mister salvaged some strange black and purple gauntlets, and placed them on Expert's legs. He could walk again, but it was painful. Mister helped him get through it.

Ever since the powerplaying wolves who were cat-wannabes attacked, nothing has ever been the same for Mister and Expert. Expert still wears the gauntlets. It turns out, these are powerful Phantom Gauntlets, infused with mysterious Phantom energies...

Mister has been scarred forever. Some say he is a little insane. If he sees another wolf acting like a cat, he starts freaking out... But he never fights back. He lets the "cats" play their little game of words. He learns their secrets. He knows everything.

Hey Sir, its me! I'm Bold text. I want to talk about something. I think you are spoiling the main story with all these backstories! You should get on with the main story, and introduce these characters as we go along, maybe it will be a better experience for people if they don't know everything about a character before they meet him or her.

Good idea, Bold text! In fact, I might as well start the story right now. I guess I already spoiled Prancing, Lieutenant, Tree, Expert, Mister, and Mighty... But there are still many more characters to meet...

Chapter 5 - The (sort of) beginning!

This story is finally about to begin. I, Sir, will start the narrative in 1st person, and introduce characters as I go along. I might let others tell their view story in the other chapters, and so on. I project that the story will be the most immersive and also confusing story ever retold on this entire website!

It was a nice, stormy day in Jamaa. To most people, it was nasty weather. But to me, it was fantastic. The rain was cool and wet and the puddles were the best to splash in. There were skyscrapers, some leaned to the side, supported by crazy arches and astonishing feats of architecture, and others were interesting shapes like triangles and cylinders. On the sides of each building were advanced wind farms- each designed to collect as much wind as possible and convert it into energy. Solar panels were infused in 60% of all the skyscraper's windows. Small thin trees, native to mountainous regions, grew on sky-top gardens. Sky-tops were a new term for the efficient gardens that rested on top of skyscrapers in those days; they were built of plants made to withstand low air-pressures and high wind speeds.

I assume you are confused, you are wondering how this could even be remotely close to Jamaa. Well, I would not like to lie to you, so I will explain to you exactly where I am.

I am in the future.

Not your future, but in another you's future. I'm in an alternate dimension, which is set in the future of Jamaa. The exact date is January 1st, 2587. Its the anniversary of a very important day.

Its a little chilly, but there hasn't been very much snow. It usually melts when it hits the pavement. Not many animals drive vehicles; many just ride on the 0-friction trains that hover using magnetism that can go almost 300 mph, or about 482 km.

It probably seems crazy to see animals living in such an advanced world... But they couldn't have made it without help. I'm going to tell you the true story. You may not believe me at first, but if I don't tell you now, you may not understand.

Stories turn into rumors, rumors turn into tall-tales, which turn into myths, which turn into legends, and then get twisted and retold so many times until they are much different from the first time the story was told...

But I wanted to hear the truth. I went back to before the story was considered a legend. I went as far back as I could, so that I could watch it happen before my own eyes.

Chapter 6 - The Story of Zios

It was a hot, humid day. I was in between Sarepia and the Temple of Zios, where one of the river's offshoots ends. It was boggy and also very rocky. Thin tree branches reached all the way from the canopy and over the water. Colorful vines tangled around the mangroves, and the forest was filled with sounds of birds like cukoos, flycatchers, and parrots. It was like a painting, with all the colors balanced and carefully, as if every detail was gently put into place. Suddenly it all went quiet. A strange light raced from the top of the sky. It was on a path for one of the tall rocky plateaus close by. Birds started flocking, and then fleeing from the light.

I watched in awe, but I was not afraid. I knew exactly what was happening.

The light crashed into one of the plateaus. There was a shockwave from the impact, but it was quite weak, and barely made the leaves on the trees rustle. It felt like cool air had just moved in and replaced the hot, humid air, and a small breeze blew from the north.

Where the light had crashed, a golden figure rose to its feet. I climbed through the rocky jungle, and found a nice rocky spire to use as a good lookout point. When the figure turned around towards me, I could see all of its features. It had two legs, and two arms, exactly like the shape of a human, but it appeared to be made of light. But what shocked me the most was the figure's mask.

It was Zios. I had gone far enough through spacetime and found the right alternate dimension of Jamaa!

Basically, this is called an Alternate Timeline Copy, a copy of another dimension, but set in a different time.

The Jamaa calender starts on January 1st, and today was that day. The start of the calender marks the start of a new era for the people of Jamaa...

Did I mention any sentient being is considered a person?

Anyways, the new era was marked by the giving of The Two Gifts. These two gifts were knowledge and speech. Zios gave these two gifts to animals, from Man.

Zios, believe it or not, was from Earth. He traveled space and time to find an almost exact Alternate Timeline Copy of Earth. Not an exact copy, an almost exact copy. He was looking for a copy of Earth, with one difference- No humans.

He wanted to create a heaven for all animals, but not wild. He wanted to see what would happen if animals could feel and love just like he did.

When he gave The Two Gifts of knowledge and speech to the animals, there were no wars. There were no territories. Instead of the survival of the fittest, it was now a peaceful, intelligent world. But of course, animals still had to eat... So yeah. Bugs and fish got the short end of the stick (because they are the animals at the bottom of the food chain)... But for the most part it was lovely.

About 10 years later, animals had formed tribes and clans. They were hunter-gatherers, and they became smarter and smarter as the years went by. But even with their increasing intelligence, soon they forgot all about what really happened... They assumed Zios created everything, because they weren't really all that smart back then anyway.

They created a stone temple, with bronze and golden decorations, to honor Zios. They built amazing fountains and irrigation, and thick stone doors that could be opened with levers. They created many works about their world. Some of these works we still read to today (and for some reason still believe). They wrote down everything they knew about their world. (But it wasn't very accurate),

Here is how the first draft of the legend went:

Light came from sky.

Landed on empty world.

Was bored.

Made world better place to live.

Made animals to live in world.

Was bored again.

People worshiped it.

Worship it or die.

The end.

Kind of a boring story. But it worked. Over time it became more stretched...

There was nothing.

Light appeared.

Light named Zios.

Zios made planets and stars.

Zios was bored.

Zios made life on one planet.

If you don't worship Zios you'll get thrown into the sun.

The end.

Now of course you are wondering, WHAT ABOUT THE HERON LADY??

Well, I'm getting to that part! You see, Zios was only mortal. He had mortal desires, like love and friendship. But because everyone was like "OMG IF U DONT WORSHIP HIM HE WILL ZAP U IN2 TEH SUN!!" nobody wanted to go near Zios. So he was really, really lonely. Like, more lonely than I am...

Anyways, Zios learned that having all the power wasn't fun. People feared him.

"Its better to be feared than loved," -some guy (maybe Machiavelli)

Well, Zios didn't agree with that. He was miserable. He would sit on top of the plateau he first arrived on, and weep and cry every single day, because nobody loved him. About several thousand years later, if you Jamoogled (Jamaa's version of Google) him, his definition would come up as:

"A mythical, powerful deity said to have created the universe and the entire world. He can zap people into the Sun."

Jeez. People are such a jerk to Zios.

Zios couldn't see into the future, so he didn't know about Jamoogle yet, but he was still really sad. Nobody seemed to notice him crying. All they did was build more statues of him and write more stories about why you should worship him.

He felt like a little baby but he couldn't help the crying. Was giving intelligence to all these dumb animals a bad idea?

It was late at night, about a year since Zios started throwing his fit. But he was not alone.

He heard the graceful beat of wings behind him. A shadow was cast over him, and he turned around. A graceful, sleek heron was facing him. She was almost as tall as he was, and her yellow eyes seemed to reflect every last drop of moonlight. Her feathers sparkled and shone as she danced around. She was trying to impress him.

Zios didn't even talk. He was put under a trance by the swift dances of the heron.

She said to him,

"You are nothing but mortal..."

She twirled around, with her long feathers trailing behind her like ribbons.

"I am a mortal as well."

He wondered how the heron knew he was a mortal.

The heron paused her graceful dance, and looked to Zios.

"My name is Mira."

Before Zios could respond, she had already ran behind him. He looked up in time to see her jump and glide over his head, only to land in front of him again.

She then looked away, and dived off the side of the plateau, opening her wings, and then swooping upwards into the sky. She flew far off into the moonlight, until Zios could see her no more.

Chapter 7 - The Sun and the Moon

Every night, Mira would visit Zios. They talked about life, and soon they knew each other very well. Mira's family was worried about her. She would go off into the night, and only return very early in the morning.

Eventually, the two were married, and shared their knowledge with Jamaa. There were a few songs written about them, actually, I think one went like this:

We may be different and opposites at that-

But none of us fight at the drop of a hat!

We will dance and play no matter the weather,

'Till the end of the night.

The sun lives as light, the moon lives as feathers,

When nobody is looking they will dance.

Zios the sun,

Mira the moon,

Its a pair made only by chance.

~folk song titled The Sun and the Moon

Chapter 8 - All good things

Mira and Zios stayed together, always. It was like a fairytale. But they were old. Zios was starting to have trouble walking, and Mira, although younger than him, was slowed down as well. The two decided to live far away from any of the animals, where they could live in peace together, away from the priests who denied their stories. They picked the top of a plateau, much like the one they first met on. The plateau had a gorgeous view of a waterfall, and it was covered in thick spruce and pine trees. You may know this area, as it was just discovered again recently. It is named Royal Ridge.

The peace didn't last long, though. Zios was dying. Mira couldn't stand to see him like this. Zios created the phantoms, to help protect Jamaa once he was no longer able to do it himself.

The night after he created the phantoms, he wasn't able to dance with Mira anymore.

He had passed away.

Chapter 9 - Mira's tears

Mira was completely heartbroken. Her love, and only friend, was gone. Even her parents were gone. After being made a queen, her life had been extended to much longer than that of a normal heron's. She watched everyone she had known fade away.

"I wish I could have just faded away with them!" she screamed.

She started crying over the remains of Zios. His body of light had gone away, and all that remained was a dark brown mask. It was no longer golden, and the blue eyes now had no color. The mask seemed to frown.

All the hate and sadness Mira had ever felt was all being let out, all at once. The phantoms that Zios had created, were making Jamaa a better place already. But when they heard the screaming, agony, and sorrow of Mira, they absorbed her hate and sadness, and turned their backs on Jamaa. Mira barely saw what happened. She was trying to take Zio's mask to his old ruined temple, to honor him...

But as she was flying, the phantoms clung to her and shocked her. After several minutes, her wings could no longer keep her aloft.

They killed her.

The mask fell loose from her talons, crashing into the old, dry fountain that used to stand in Zios's name.

Mira fell quickly to the ground, and one last tear dropped from her eye.

Chapter 10 - Fall and Rise of an Empire

Everyone watched as it all fell apart.

The phantoms tried to lock up and enslave as many animals as they could. Many who were not able to be captured were killed. The phantoms that had successfully kidnapped animals left through a dark vortex, taking the animals with them. The remaining phantoms went around polluting and destroying the natural landscapes, and creating watchtowers to keep an eye on their animal subjects. The towns and cities were ruined, and animals barely got along any longer under the rule of the phantoms.

Artisans stopped making sculptures of Zios and Mira. The only image of Mira that remained was the old statue, but even that was ignored. Nobody even remembers who first made the statue of Mira. Some say it was there before Mira was made queen, perhaps put there as a prophecy. Zios's old mask just laid in ruin, next to his forgotten temple, plagued with pollution and surrounded by phantom forces.

The animals knew they would not survive much longer without using their gifts, knowledge and speech. They had an idea to fight back against the phantoms. They chose 6 animals, each chosen for their skills in Bravery, Stealth, Kindness, Technology, Artistry, and Botany.

Their names were,

Sir Gilbert, the brave Tiger

Professor Greely, the stealthy Wolf

Liza, the kind Panda

Graham, the smart Monkey

Peck, the artistic Rabbit

Cosmo, the botanic Koala

Some say these 6 animals each had a fragment of Mira and Zio's souls in them. These 6 "Alphas" went around the world, using all their abilities together to restore the damage the phantoms had done. But the hardest things to clear up were the phantom's watchtowers. Greely would sneak in and expose the weaknesses of the tower, Sir Gilbert followed and fought back against the remaining phantoms. Liza aids her fellow Alphas when they are in trouble, and Peck usually comes up with the creative plans of attack. Graham can invent new technologies to use against the phantoms, and Cosmo helps bring back the plant life the phantoms had killed off. If one of the Alphas was missing from the attack, everything could go wrong.

After many years, the alphas had removed every phantom watchtower, all except one, which Greely kept secret from the others... He didn't want to completely get rid of the phantoms. He had questions about them, that deserved answers. (This is the tower in The Great Escape).

But despite the 6 Alpha's fame, there were more animals who shared the souls of Mira and Zios. Nobody knows all their names, but each of them are just as important as the first 6 Alphas.

They live with the rest of us, not yet aware of their own secrets. But when the time comes, they will be ready.

"Some believe it is only great power that can keep evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."

-a wizard

Chapter 11 - Back to the Future

You know understand the origin of intelligence in Jamaa. If Zios had never given those gifts to the animals, they would not have been able to build these beautiful, eco-friendly skyscrapers I see here today thousands of years later. But don't get me wrong, there are still phantoms, who haunt the unprotected lands of Jamaa. Some say the phantoms represent the unwillingness of animals to change. Whenever a new technology is proposed, some small groups of animals refuse to accept it...

Here is an example.

"You shouldn't use underwater turbines here! It's not what it's meant to be! Jamaa is supposed to be natural, not full of turbines and vehicles, we're animals, for Zios's sake!"

The protesters kept the energy company from building the turbines, and guess what happened?

That same river became polluted by phantoms. The phantoms sucked all the energy they could from the animals living around the river. If they had built the turbines, enough energy would have been generated to keep the power going, even with the phantoms leeching off of it.

Now, you don't really have to worry, because phantoms can't build huge watchtowers like they used to. Phantoms have always been seen as all the evil in this world, materialized into a nasty and vile species.

...But not all of them are like that.

Not all of them are bad.

One good phantom remains.

Only one.

~=~=~=~=~=~=~Mira's last tear rolled off of her cold, dead body. It soaked into the ground.

It was a tear of happiness.

Mira was happy she was finally fading away. She would meet her family again, she would maybe even meet Zios... She would be dead, like everyone else she loved. It was finally over.

The tear stayed in the ground.

It would not be touched for another 2,580 years.

Chapter 12 - Jeremy.

On January 1st, 2587, it happened.

The tear had awoken.

A small, black dot grew from the ground. It stayed still for a moment, as if it had given up, but then it lifted itself off the ground, and hovered there. It opened its small, timid eye, and then instantly hid from the animal who was behind it.

The one who noticed the speck was named Gorgeous Braveivy. Her friends just called her Ivy.

She gently reached her paws in the bushes, and led the black speck out.

"Its ok, little guy, I'm not going to hurt you... You're a phantom, aren't you? I've never seen a phantom so small... And I've never even seen a phantom be so scared before."

The phantom shuddered. It was scared of everything. It had only just been born, and it was very delicate. Normally young phantoms will shock anything that gets close, but this one just hovered there and shivered.

"You don't act like the other phantoms I've seen..."

The phantom just kept shivering.

"Hey, what if I gave you a name..."

The phantom's eye widened. Not from happiness, just pure terror.

"Jeez, nothing is going to make you like me, huh?"

Ivy sneaked into her den, without her friends noticing. She locked the door behind her, closed all the windows, and then set the phantom on a table. It lifted itself off the table and started hovering above it. It no longer seemed scared, but more annoyed.

Ivy poked the phantom. It jerked back.

"You know what, I'm just going to name you Jeremy."

The phantom looked at her like she was crazy.

"You think looking at me will make me change your name? I'm not going to name a lame thing like you 'Killer,' you know."

The phantom glared at her.

"Oh, so you think I'm the lame one?" she snapped back.

The phantom backed away a bit and almost fell off the table. Ivy picked Jeremy up and carried him to her backyard. In the yard rested a large, sleek spaceship.

"This, my friend, is the Blue Griffon."

She lifted up her other paw and pushed a button on some sort of control panel strapped to her wrist.

Hot plasma shot out of the engines and from the vents, then a warm humming sound filled the yard. The plasma stopped shooting out as violently, and shifted from a molten white color, to a deep hot magenta.

The phantom stared wildly at the spaceship.

Ivy jumped in the spaceship, and yelled to Jeremy.

"Are you coming, or what, bro?"

Jeremy looked around him. There was nothing else to do, so he slowly and steadily got in the ship with her.

She closed the cockpit, turned up a few knobs, and clicked a few buttons. The humming grew louder, and the landing gear folded up as the ship started hovering above the ground. The trees shook from the downdraft of the ship. The cockpit lid clicked into place, and the vented plasma started turning white hot again. The ship started lifting into the sky, and the hyperdrive activated, speeding the ship up to unimaginable speeds, launching it up into the heavens.

Once it exited the atmosphere, Ivy balanced it and made it hover in space.

"Hey little guy, do you see that?"

She pointed to a star formation far away. Looking closer, Jeremy noticed it resembled the mask of some kind of thing, but he didn't remember what.

"Its beautiful, isn't it?"

She then pointed over to the distant solar system, that they had been in 50 seconds ago.

"See that little blue speck? That's Jamaa." She then told him about all the other planets that she could see.

Jeremy could barely believe his eyes. How could he be that far from the world, that fast?

As Jeremy literally stared into space, an alarm suddenly sounded inside the Blue Griffon, and a couple lights flashed. Jeremy nearly passed out from all the sudden commotion.

"Oh darn! Not them again!"

A group of pirates rose from the space around them and circled the Blue Griffon, with their makeshift high-energy-focus-beam-launchers attached to their salvaged, rusty cargo ships.

"These nasty pirates like to hang out in deep space, waitin' for travelers like us!"

She powered up the focused-laser mounted in the "beak" of her ship.

"Almost ready to shoot!" she said.

A huge, bright magenta beam shot from the front, She tilted one of the thrusters on the wings and increased its power, causing the ship to spin in a circle, with the laser still shooting. The spinning laser sliced through every pirate ship that was circling them.

"YEAH! Now that's what I call the Tornado!" she yelled, while stabilizing the ship.

Jeremy looked up at Ivy. Maybe he could be friends with her, after all. I mean, a wolf flying a spaceship named after a cool creature of a cool color shooting lasers and destroying pirates? Who wouldn't wanna be a friend with that wolf?

Chapter 13 - The Best of Friends

Jeremy and Ivy were best friends. They would go get ice cream together, take walks through the park, and enter their ship in races. Sometimes they won 2nd, most of the time they won 1st.

Many of the other racers would say, "It's not my fault I lost! Its bad engineering. Badly built spaceships,"

Ivy and Jeremy would just giggle at them. They didn't always care about winning, just about having fun and going fast.

Ivy had to be careful, though. Doing all these things with Jeremy was a huge risk... If anyone saw Jeremy, Ivy could be arrested for being "the mother" of a phantom.

But Ivy didn't care! Jeremy was more fun than ever! Ivy was teaching him how to use gems and how to cook food, like all normal animals in Jamaa.

But aside from teaching him how to be like a normal person in Jamaa, she helped him practice his phantom abilities. Normally phantoms specialize in electricity and pollution, but Jeremy had other powers. He could create strange energy, that had the reverse effects of other phantom's energy attacks. He could heal plants, heal the sick, and even repair polluted areas. Ivy and Jeremy would sneak out at night, clearing phantom pollution. When the alphas got there to clean it up in the morning, it would already be crystal clear. The people of Jamaa started calling it a miracle. They talked about putting cameras up, and eventually they did, but Jeremy and Ivy always managed to sneak past the surveillance.

Even though phantoms were illegal to keep as companions because of their normal hazardous habits, the danger didn't stop her from having fun with her new friend.

It was late at night. Ivy found a very old electric car, perhaps from more 100 years ago, before the magnetized bullet trains were available to everyone. It didn't belong to anybody, she assumed, and she was curious to drive it. When she got in, the dashboard was very similar to that of her spaceship, and she had no trouble figuring it out. She drove it into an abandoned parking lot, and instantly started doing donuts, wheelies, and all sorts of stunts she could think of. Jeremy got a little nervous.

"Oh jeez, Jeremy, you are right. We probably shouldn't be doing this. This isn't even our car..."

She drove the car quickly back to its original spot, turned off the engine, got out as fast as she could, pulling Jeremy with her, then hiding. She had just barely noticed them before, but they appeared to be some other animals in dark clothing about 40 feet away, under a burnt out lamp post. One was an arctic wolf, the other, a kangaroo.

"Moderators..." she whispered.

The kangaroo flicked his ears around as he pulled out a phone, or maybe a walkie-talkie of some kind. He then started talking into the device,

"Uh yeah, I think there was something going on around here. i think I can see some uh, tire tracks... they look pretty fresh. I think we got a reckless, or maybe drunk driver around here somewhere."

The arctic wolf looked over to the kangaroo and nodded. "Nice reporting, David."

"Hey, are you making fun of me?" David snapped back to the arctic wolf.

"Pfft," the wolf walked closer to David. "I'm the one supposed to be doing to reporting."

David glared at the wolf. "If we keep doing this every night, we aren't going to get our job done."

The arctic wolf then matched the tire tracks to the old car. He looked at it with curiosity, and said, "This thing looks like it hasn't been driven in years.." He then looked inside. "There's nothing in there at all..." He thought about using his scanner to pick up any nearby life, but he decided against it.

"David, I don't think this is something we have to worry about."

David glared at him. "Marcus, do you think you are going to get out of doing your job again?

Marcus looked down at the ground. He pulled out his scanner. I don't want to do this... He thought to himself. He pressed a few buttons, selected some settings, and held the scanner up, pointing it around the parking lot. The scanner started buzzing when it was pointed towards the dumpster, the very dumpster Ivy and Jeremy were hiding behind...

"Oh god, David, I picked something up..."

Chapter 14 - Through Ivy's Eyes

I quickly threw Jeremy into the dumpster. As long as they didn't find him, it would be okay. Besides, phantoms aren't alive (well, they are alive, but in a different way), so their scanners shouldn't pick him up.

I was going to distract them. Of course they would think I would be the only one who did it, and if they saw me, they probably wouldn't look in the dumpster.

"So, what have you been up to out here?" asked Marcus, with a stiff tone. He was trying to make his voice deeper than it was before.

"Were you driving that car in the middle of this parking lot?" Marcus pointed to the tracks, which went around and around in a circle.

"I did..." I said softly.

"Is she even old enough to drive?" asked David, quietly, to Marcus.

"I think so," Marcus replied, in a whisper.

"Where you driving with anybody else?" asked David, more kindly than Marcus.

"No," I responded. But it was true. I wasn't driving with anybody else, I was driving with a phantom.

David wrote on a small yellow slip, and then handed it to me. It was a ticket, saying I had to pay 100 gems for "reckless driving." I didn't refuse to pay him the money, I had about 400 gems left anyway.

"Have a good night, ma'am," said Marcus, as the two moderators walked away. I think I saw them give each other a high-five.

"Pathetic..." I whispered to myself.

After the two moderators disappeared, I pulled Jeremy out of the dumpster. He made some kind of upset buzzing noise, that probably meant something rude, and he shook off some off the trash that had gotten stuck to him.

"That could've been bad, Jeremy. We're lucky.

Also, I'm never driving a random abandoned car ever again..."

Jeremy glared at me. It was about 3:00 A.M., and we were both really tired.

"Lets just go home and sleep in..."

Jeremy agreed. He was just as tired as I was.

We went home and slept until 11:00. When I got up, I was really hungry. But there was no food in the house left... I swear I had just gone shopping. But it wasn't Jeremy who ate it...

There was someone else in the house!

The extremely odd creature lifted his head to look at me. He lifted his hat a little so I could see his face.. And he said to me,

"Sorry about.. all the umm, missing food. I've been traveling over thousands of years, however it only took me two years, and I haven't eaten at all for those two years. I was standing on top of a rocky spire, that's probably toppled over by now.... uhh... Its hard to explain..."

He handed me a sack that had 600 gems in it.

"Thats to cover all the food... and umm, also furniture I ate."

"You ate my furniture?" I asked, slightly worried.

"It was only one chair... ummm..." he responded. He seemed to feel very guilty.

"Can you explain this to me? You traveled for thousands of years, but it only took 2 years, and you didn't eat the entire time? Are you crazy?" I yelled to him.

"No, I'm not crazy. Just unorganized."

I was so confused. I assumed if he was telling the truth, then he would have to be a time-traveler or something. Like, a Time Lord. I don't even know. But still, why would he eat my chair?

"It's not time-traveling, its much more simpler to do, but far more complicated to explain. Let me show you."

He pushed several buttons on a wristband much like mine. I could see it had a small keyboard on it, which he entered coordinates on. The coordinates he entered read -6, 854, 43.7.

He pressed Enter.

Nothing happened.

He entered coordinates again, this time reading -6, 864, 43.7.

Some sort of vortex/portal/teleportation thing opened in the middle of the room. It was a swirling blue, purple, and orange mixture on the edges, and on the inside I could see Jamaa Township. But it wasn't the big city you see today. It was a cute little village with a few buildings, and yellow cobblestone streets. I jumped in, then I turned around, but there was no portal. I guess it was a one-way trip. I stared in awe at the other animals around me. There was lots of hustle and bustle in the village, but I guess it was a city back then.

People were constantly shouting out,

"I need a mate! Come to my den please, if you like me!"

"Please trade me a headdress!"

"I need a spike!!"

But some words caught my attention. This one conversation seemed important.

"Have you heard the rumors?"

"I think so..."

"They say that there's still phantoms out there."

"Phantoms are just a myth, like all the other stuff."

"They said the alphas didn't get rid of all the phantoms."

"Alphas? Give me a break."

The other animal then left.

The creature that I talked to earlier grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me behind some bushes.

"This is very important," he said. "I needed someone to help me with this, and you were my best choice."

"What did you need help with?" I asked. "And, what is your name?"

"Call me Sir. So uh, this is the year 2015."

"In the past?" I asked excitedly.

"No, we aren't in the past. We are in a copy of the past. If we were in your exact past, then spacetime would be completely screwed up by now." he replied, sounding very serious. "But we are in an alternate past, meaning we won't affect your exact future, only the future of the animals you see here."

"But you said you needed help with something, Sir," I said, impatiently.

"Ah yes, the reason I traveled to this copy of the past is because something extremely important, and extremely terrible, is going to happen today. If you're wondering why I care so much about this past, is because this is my past. Well, not really. Its really hard to explain. This past affects your past, which then is your future, and... I think I messed up. Well, the thing is, if we don't save this past, then all the other timelines will die as well."

"I think I understand..." I replied, though I wasn't sure.

"Well, one of the most famous Alphas, Greely, made a huge mistake."

"Greely? Greely is still around in my future!" I couldn't believe how old Greely was, and I got really excited.

"Yes, he is old, but that's not important now. Whats important is that we find the phantom nest he is hiding." Sir seemed kind of worried. "You probably already knew that Greely once hid an entire phantom watchtower in his backyard so he could study phantoms, and you probably already know that he also died while stopping the phantom volcano from erupting.."

"Greely died?" I said, shocked.

"Yes, he did die. But something brought him back, which I will explain later. What's important now is that we find the hidden phantom nest."

"I think you mean a phantom hive." I said, trying to sound smart.

"I guess you could call it a hive, but its not really a hive. Its The Hive. Not the hive, The Hive. Its 96.4 times larger than the hive some of the alphas cleared out recently. It spans entire underground channels, some miles long. The phantoms are preparing something huge. They aren't going to just conquer this Jamaa, but every other Jamaa they can reach as well...." A seal came close to seeing us behind the bushes. "This isn't the place we should talk. Follow me." Sir opened a portal to his home, and we both went in.

I replied to his earlier statement. "So that means my future is in danger too?" I gulped from fear.

Sir looked down at the floor like he was afraid to tell me.

He slowly looked back up at me and said, "Yes."

Chapter 15 - The Plan

I wanted to cry from how much was going on around me. Sir could tell I was feeling scared. He gently put his talon on my shoulder, and said,

"You have something. You have courage, and hope... aaaand you also have a little phantom who can help us."

I lifted up my raccoon hat and pulled out Jeremy. He had heard our whole conversation earlier, and he was shaking with fear, just as I was.

"Now if we do this right, we can sneak right into the deepest part of The Hive, quickly and quietly. At the base of The Hive, there should be an ancient Vortex that leads to a dimension the phantoms have conquered. In that one dimension, the phantoms have a piece of technology they stole from me. They will use it to travel to any dimension they want, if they get it repaired. If we destroy that technology before they repair it, they will no longer be able to travel to any alternate dimension, and your future will be safe."

Jeremy looked at me. He then looked at Sir and nodded, and then saluted him.

Sit then said, "Now, Ivy, you are one of the most important people in this mission. But you aren't the only one besides me. There are more people we will need to successfully pull of this mission. I have it all planned out, and it looks like we will need a lot of people to get this done right. The first step is getting past Greely, or any of the alphas. We can't just barge into Greely's house and ask him to let us get in The Hive he is keeping secret. We are going to need something fast and stealthier than Greely himself, so we can get in the hive. We need a stealth jet."

"A STEALTH JET? This mission keeps getting crazier and crazier! I don't know if I can handle this!" I added, "Plus, I can't even fly a jet. I can only fly spaceships."

"Its ok," Sir said, reassuringly. "I know someone else who can fly a jet."

Chapter 16 - Through the Eyes of ????????

I. Was. Reading... A bOOk. a GooD book. About... STEALTH. called. The Art of Stealth and... i forgot. anyways it was COOl it was... Written. By. PROFESSOR GReeLY! You KnOW whhhhy? BecAUse. PraNCING had JUST! ORDERED! A new stealth JEt fOR mE. its. super. IMPORTANT. ok ok ok.

Then i heard KNOCKING ON THE DooR!!

I went, to. to. the. door. And. Opened. it. Because I Can. there. was SIR. And. another. girl. named. GORGEOUS. funny name ha. OK. sir. said. to me..

"Snickety! Me and my friend here need your help badly. You're the only one who can fly a jet and wait for us. You see, if I wasn't the one who had to go into The Hive, I would be flying the jet..."

"I UNDERSTAnd." I. said. TO HIM.

then gorgeOUS said. to sir.....

"Who is this guy? He's really strange and he talks like... like he has a problem."

sir resPONded,

"Now, Gorgeous, don't be so rude. Snickety is probably the best flyer in Jamaa."

i nodded because I agEEd with sir.

then SIR SaID, "Snickety, are you aware of The Plan yet?"

i said "SOrt OF."

sir continUED, "Snickety, this stealth jet is extremely important. It contains an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP. Its an electrical weapon. We can use it to disable any electrical security systems that might be in our way of entering The Hive."

it s-soundS reALLY complicated. and. illegal. but i kept TALKING to SIr any. ways.

"Snickety, when you start to hover near Greely's den, you must activate the EMP and disable his lights and surveillance. Then the rest of us can sneak in one of The Hive entrances. Lieutenant will hover a stealth helicopter above the drop zone and survey for any airborne threats, and Mister and Expert will patrol the ground, taking care of any phantoms that sprout from the other entrances. Mighty and Tree will provide a distraction, and once we have gotten deep enough into The Hive, the distraction is no longer needed, as long as the other troops stay hidden."

gorGEOus then said, "Oh, wow. How long have you been planning this?"

SIR resPONDed, "About 40 minutes."

Chapter 17 - Through the Eyes of No-one

(because writing in first person is hard when you have to type like a CrAzy. PersON)

"wOw you tHInk vEry fAsT," Snickety remarked.

Sir then looked over to Snickety. "Its probably from 300,000 years of fixing interdimensional threats to the multiverse. Its usually hard work. But you also meet lots of new friends..."

"Like me!" said Ivy, with excitement. She couldn't believe she was going to drop out of a jet and go on a cool military-scale mission with a mad, old, chimera, wolf... thing. I'm so ready for this... she thought.

She then started to think about Jeremy. How could he be such a big help to this mission? Sir hadn't really explained it all... Ivy pulled Jeremy out from under her hat, to try to get someone's attention. Sir then looked over to Jeremy, and said,

"Oh, yes. I remember why we needed this phantom. You see, the ancient portal is locked by a secret code. Not an average code, more like a spell. Only a phantom can unlock the spell and open the portal."

Jeremy looked at himself like he was suddenly important.

"BuT how AM. I. Supposed. to.. where do I flY the JET? jet jet jet jet. love jets." interrupted Snickety.

Sir randomly got out a map and pointed to a large, unmarked mountain many miles north of Jamaa Township. Gorgeous pointed at the map and exclaimed, "That's the village we went to earlier!"

"Yes," said Sir. "It does happen to be in the same dimension we were just in earlier."

Gorgeous then looked around her, puzzled. How did she get from Sir's house to Snickety's front door, anyway? Anyways, Snickety couldn't take his eyes off the book laying on the table.

"Where you reading that earlier?" asked Ivy, politely.

"oh YES i was. SOrry. also did you know about jets.jets. jets are CooL," said Snickety, as a response.

"Uhhh, ok..." said Ivy.

Sir then placed another random map and a random blackboard onto one of Snickety's walls. He drew a little diagram plan or whatever, depicting a doodle of Snickety using the jet's EMP, and showing his and Ivy's route down to the ancient portal. It also had a little doodle on the side that showed a camera lens pointing to a phantom, pointing to Sir, pointing to Greely. Ivy and the others all understood everything on the blackboard but the doodle on the side.

"Whats that supposed to mean?" asked Ivy.

Sir looked at her and said, "It shows phantoms stealing technology from a science facility, then showing me taking advantage of those technologies the phantoms stole, and then showing Greely stealing my research."

Snickety's eye twitched a little bit.

Sir looked oddly at Snickety, and said, "Don't worry. That's not very important to the story anyways.

Me and Greely have always kind of had a rivalry. Everytime I do research, he either steals mine, or does the exact same experiment. Every time I visit him and give him cookies to try to make him nicer to me, he just rants about how 'Jammers think they can be so BRAVE. Alphas are the REAL HEROES.'" Sir starts telling a story about one of his conversations with Greely.

The story flashes back to a scene of Sir sharing cookies with Greely in Greely's living room. Greely says, "I'm tired of Jammers just running into the volcano like, 'yeah I can handle this,' then setting it off and then I have to stop it. Why do you think I have to set up surveillance all over the place? I don't want the Jammers interrupting MY research."

Sir noticed how Greely put an emphasis on MY, as if he was lying.

Greely continued, "But that's not the biggest problem. While stopping the volcano, my spell only worked... well, after the volcano had just erupted... I was killed.... I would rather not talk about it."

Sir had already figured out why Greely was able to come back. It was some sort of spiritual gift, possibly the souls of Zios and Mira infusing into Greely's soul, giving him enough energy to wake up, sadly being captured by phantoms, and then rescued later by the other Alphas. Sir was sure that Greely had kept his death secret to the other Alphas. He was the only Alpha that had died before, and he could probably only get revived once. If he were to die again, he might not be able to come back, and he may be locked in the spirit world forever.

Greely stared at the floor and barely muttered, "Anyways, thanks for the cookies. But I'm not the blind fool you take me to be."

Sir, feeling guilty for giving Greely the cookies, said, "I never thought you were a fool..."

Greely raised his head. "You're giving these cookies to make me like you more, aren't you? You're tired of me using your research to make new discoveries that you already made, and getting all the attention because EVERYBODY KNOWS WHO GREELY IS, and Sir is just a little idiot running around trying to get rares like every other Jammer."

Sir glared at Greely. He slowly took a bit out of his cookie, not even looking away from Greely. Then Sir promptly threw the cookie on the ground and stormed out. Sir kept wondering why Greely called him "little." especially because Sir was as tall as, if not taller than, Greely. Maybe it was supposed to be some dumb insult.

The scene returns to Snickety's cottage.

Ivy and Snickety stared wildly at Sir.

"I never knew Greely was such a jerk," remarked Ivy.

"YeaH he IS REALLY. rude to Me TOo," explained Snickety, even though he had never met Greely, he had only seen him from a distance.

Sir looked at the floor. Just thinking about Greely's words made him hurt.

"Aww," said Ivy. "We could go get some ice-cream..."

"I'm too old for that," said Sir, discouraged.

Snickety skipped over to Sir. "You'RE not. GOING to let GReeLY ruin this EPIC MIssION, are yooou?"

Sir looked at the blackboard again. "No, I'm not! I'm going to show that Alpha that he doesn't set a good example. He is a bully and a stealer. Possibly also a cheater."

Ivy said, "We can't really talk to him now. We are about to go invade The Hive he is hiding. Not the Hive, The Hive."

Sir looked at Ivy. "Well yeah, we can't just go barge in and yell at him for being a jerk to us. Also, good job on your hives."

Ivy felt good for saying The Hive instead of the Hive. It made her feel a bit smarter. (It was also less confusing because if she said the Hive then people would get it confused with the adventure about the Hive which is NOT The Hive)

For several more hours, Snickety, Ivy, and Sir discussed The Plan and other things. At about 6:00 P.M, the sound of powerful turbines and engines destroyed the silence. It wasn't as loud as you would expect it to be. Stealth jets are very quiet, (compared to other jets).

A deep black, triangular jet landed roughly in Snickety's yard, flattening his tomato and pepper plants.

A dark green-blue unicorn pony with a shiny black mane got out of the jet, and took off the thick jacket he was wearing, revealing the tuxedo underneath. He removed his helmet, goggles, and other jet-flying gear and trotted over to Snickety.

"Hello, friends," said the pony. It was Prancing. Prancing handed all the jet gear to Snickety, and turned to Sir.

"You have no idea how much I went through to get this jet." said Prancing.

"Then you have no idea how much I went through to find this wolf, then." Sir pointed to Ivy.

Ivy blushed a bit. She had never seen a pony before, especially a unicorn pony.

"Uhh, hi." she said. "What's your name?"

"My name, is Prancing."

Ivy responded, "Ah, so you're a little prancing pony!"

Prancing glared at Ivy.

Ivy quickly said she was sorry. She didn't know if unicorn ponies were dangerous or powerful yet. She had read about unicorns being able to use magic somewhere a long time ago.

Sir turned to Prancing. "Alright Prancing, is tonight the night?"

Prancing slowly nodded with approval. "Just try not to mess this up, Snickety."

Snickety was too busy drooling on the floor to respond.

Chapter 18 - The Implementation

It was 2:00 A.M. A stealth jet hovered softly near a volcano.

Snickety and Ivy were both wearing some really cool gear.

I'm so ready for this... Ivy thought to herself. She had a dark camouflage jacket and hiking boots on, probably the perfect gear for sneaking through any rocky area.

All of the mission's participants were wearing a special collar that could allow them to contact each other, like a walkie-talkie could. Whenever they spoke it was transmitted through the collars and special earpieces allowing them to talk to each other from anywhere. Even if they barely whispered, the others could still hear it.

Snickety wore gear made for flying jets, but he also wore his "lUCky wind. GAUNTlets" that were supposed to give him better luck at flying. With the wind gauntlets, his natural flying skills, and all his training, he probably was the best flyer in Jamaa. He was probably better at flying than most eagles.

Even though the jet was fairly quiet, Snickety and all the others wore headgear until they were ready to drop. Snickety yelled through the headgear,

"ACTIVATING ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE, IN 3,

2,

1."

Snickety jammed his finger into a button, triggering the EMP. All the lights and electronics in and around Greely's home were all put out or fried by the EMP. Ivy and Sir took off their headgear, and Snickety leveled the jet.

"See YOU on. the. OTHER SIDE!" He yelled as Ivy and Sir jumped from the stealth jet and opened their parachutes. Sir landed first and immediately pulled out a weapon from under the blanket on his back. It was some sort of shotgun, but with the end sawed off.

Ivy stared at it with widened eyes. "Where... where did you get a GUN?"

Sir loaded the weapon as they neared closer to the entrance of The Hive.

"I found it a long time ago. Do you need one too?" He pulled out a pistol. Ivy thought sawed-off shotguns were illegal. In fact, weren't guns in general illegal in Jamaa?

She excitedly, but gently, took the gun from his talon. It wasn't happy excitement, but fear.

Sir calmly told her, "Don't worry about it. They are illegal to take into public places, but anyone is allowed to have them for emergencies. This is an emergency. Sawed-off shotguns are illegal in general, but they are the only powerful thing I could fit under my blanket that wasn't a pistol." Sir and Ivy approached closely to the entrance. Sir continued speaking, but more quietly. "As long as I get rid of this thing after the mission is over, we will be okay. I've never carried weapons around like this before, actually." He stepped gently into the entrance, with his gun held up, in case anything popped up.

Ivy whispered to Sir, "Do you think guns are a little extre-"

"No," he said quickly as he shot a phantom that was only about 3 feet from him. The phantom imploded and its remains drifted away like black fog. Jeremy shivered inside of Ivy's hat. Ivy pulled him out and told him to stay close. He stayed a little too close. He didn't want to be lost.

Soon the tunnels got too dark and Ivy had to put on her Night Vision goggles.

"Hey Sir, why don't you have goggles?"

"I don't need them," said Sir, as he threw a boomseed into a group of phantoms. Ivy, Sir, and Jeremy were hidden on some purple colored metal pipelines that went below the ceiling of a large, empty room. At the bottom, and on the sides of the room were hundreds of pods, spouts, and unknown stages of phantom development.

"Phantoms have an extremely complex life cycle... Almost as complex as metroi-" He was interrupted by a loud noise that came from the bottom of the pit. Some gigantic black gelatinous creature emerged from the bottom of the room, and crawled over to an empty spot on the wall. It was laying eggs.

Ivy cursed. "Holy $#&%!"

"This is what Greely has been hiding all these years..." said Sir.

Jeremy's eye was so wide. He was completely terrified. Somewhere deep in his instincts, he knew adult phantoms should never go near the queen. He felt as if the queen was trying to control him into betraying his friends. It was almost too much for him.

Sir glanced at Jeremy. "See the way he is acting? His behaviors tell me that..."

"That what?" asked Ivy.

"That we are in The Queen's lair. I told you he would be helpful."

Sir then realized something horrible. He had theorized that if a phantom, of any gender, had grown to an enormous size like this one, it would probably be capable of producing its own EMP. Of course, a phantom so big had never been documented or even heard of, and not even Sir would have expected this. If his theory was correct, this massive Queen could generate an EMP.

If the lights went out, then Greely would think something was wrong with his Queen...

Chapter 19 - On the Rails of a Crazy Train

"This was all a mistake!" said Sir quickly, under his breath. "Well, it would have been a mistake either way. If we don't get to the portal, then its the end of every Jamaa as we know them. If we hadn't used the EMP, we couldn't sneak in. Now that we used the EMP, Greely thinks the Queen had created it, and now he will think she is in trouble. Even worse, with Mighty and Tree running around oddly to distract him, he would be even more suspicious." Sir thought for a bit. "Mighty, Tree, you need to stop your distraction until I say so."

Mighty and Tree stopped dead in their tracks, and hid in the bushes, just in time to hide from a panicked Greely.

Greely ran on all fours, rushing to an entrance of His Hive. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were slightly... teary. He was running so fast he almost missed the entrance, but he dug his paws into the ground and stopped in time to be in front of the entrance. He leaped into the hole, running down as fast as he could. The few phantoms that had survived Sir and Ivy's powerful weapons didn't see Greely, for Greely was like one with the shadows...

"How are we going to get past The Queen and to the portal before Greely finds us? He will most likely kill us. Violently," said Ivy, full of worries.

"Hey, don't worry Ivy. I can figure this out. I may regret this, and I feel bad for doing it, but it has to be done."

Sir threw a boomseed into the patch of freshly laid eggs, killing them.

The Queen screeched with terror and rage. She walked quickly and angrily, but also carefully, over to her destroyed eggs. Sure, there were thousands, if not millions more, ready to be moved to a warmer area to hatch, but she had lost about 700 eggs to that one explosion. While she was busy mourning the loss, Sir and Ivy sneaked down to the bottom of the room and found an empty old pipe to crawl through. It was their only chance. Before they went down it all the way, Sir turned back and took one more look at The Queen. She has to be at least 30 feet tall and 60 feet long, he thought to himself.

Sir and Ivy ran into many more phantoms, but they quickly killed them. Sir found hundreds of 'rare' items, all stolen and rotted in one giant heap. Perhaps they were collected to impress The Queen or King, but to no avail.

Soon they were half a mile beneath the surface, but with Greely still following...

Once Greely saw the queen weeping over the destroyed eggs, he knew someone had done it, intentionally. He was filled with rage and sorrow, just as The Queen was. He knew the only escape from that room was either the way you came in, or through to pipe. He ran down the pipe, determined to avenge the lost eggs.

On their journey to the ancient portal, Sir and Ivy came across thin stone pillars that they had to cross, one by one. They both had no trouble getting across the first few pillars, but they kept getting more and more unstable. Ivy almost fell into the abyss below, but Sir and Jeremy grabbed her before she could topple off the edge.

Soon they were in the west wing of The Hive, a mile and a half below the surface, with almost no oxygen and crushing pressures. Good thing Ivy had oxygen tanks, filters, and tons of high tech stuff made specifically for exploring deep caves.

"Sir, why don't you need these?" asked Ivy, about all the gear.

"I just don't need them," he always responded.

Greely got closer and closer to the murderers. He knew The Hive by heart. He knew every tunnel, every wing, every little nook and cranny. He would find them, if it killed him.

After days of journeying through The Hive, Sir and Ivy were now only half a mile beneath the surface, and it was much more pleasant, however, much more infested with phantoms. Sir had told everyone else to go home, and now only he, Ivy, and Jeremy were the only ones still participating in this mission. Jeremy grew very delirious at times, under the constant pressure of The Queen's ominous echoes and commands. He wanted it to stop. He was promised it would stop if he killed them, but he would never kill them. They were his friends, no matter far apart he is from them...

Sir and Ivy reached the end of the tunnel they had been traveling through for hours. It came to a dead end, and Greely was not far behind them. Thankfully Sir had brought lots of carrots, biscuits, and beef jerky to eat, so Sir and Ivy were not hungry, but they couldn't turn back. They still didn't have enough energy to turn back, and they didn't want to run straight into Greely...

About one hour later, Greely came.

He was panting, and crying. He was also extremely skinny, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He was snarling, and he came closer and closer to our heroic trio...

Sir pulled out the shotgun and aimed it for Greely. He didn't want to do it...

But before he could even pull the trigger Greely, Greely had stolen Ivy's pistol, and had it pointed at Sir.

Greely's hand was wobbly, and he could hit the trigger any second, even by accident. Greely tried to move his lips for a while, and eventually words came out. "Its... not... me... doing... THIS... ITS... A... MISTAKE...."

Greely took control of himself and threw the gun down. He collapsed on the ground. Ivy took her gun back and put it in its proper location, and Sir put his shotgun back under his blanket.

Sir helped Greely to his feet, and sat him on a leveled out rock. Sir gave food and water to Greely, which Greely took happily.

"Do you think we have enough food and water left to try to go back?" asked Ivy.

Sir didn't answer. He was scared to give her the answer...

Greely then tried to get up, but collapsed on the floor once again, this time much harder than before. The floor started to crack, and they all felt a rumble beneath them. Sir quickly put away the supplies, and told everyone to grab on to each other.

"This is gonna be a long fall," Sir said.

Chapter 20 - Into the Abyss

The ground crumbled and the quartet fell down into the abyss. Ivy wanted to scream, but she couldn't because Jeremy was hanging onto her face for his life.

After almost an entire minute of falling, they landed...

But it wasn't a hard fall.

Whatever they had landed on made them bounce up a bit, and then they landed softly down on it.

Under them were small, purple orbs, that were very squishy, but very tough. Inside them were super young phantoms. Wherever the group went, thousands of little phantom eyes followed.

"I.. never... knew... about... THIS... before..." said Greely, out of breath.

They didn't even move. They were so amazed, and terrified, of how many baby phantoms there were down here, ready to hatch.

"How will we find the portal now?" exclaimed Ivy.

Sir calculated their location, and they weren't actually very far from the portal. In fact, it was right under their noses, buried beneath the massive amounts of eggs.

Sir started removing the eggs from the group and throwing them into a big pile, trying to find the ancient portal. Ivy joined in with the egg removal, and so did Jeremy. Greely was trying to help too, but with great difficulty.

Soon they had cleared out a deep hole, but there where still a couple more layers of eggs to go.

"This could be bad. They probably have guards after guards on the other side." said Sir. And he was probably right.

About 20 minutes later, the portal had been uncovered.

"Alright Jeremy, you got this!" Ivy took Jeremy from under her hat and put him on the portal. "You know what to do, bro," she encouraged him.

Jeremy tried as hard as he could. He felt the essence of the spell, and he knew how to undo it, but it was hard work. After 10 minutes, the portal finally opened, but Jeremy had passed out. Ivy gently picked him up and placed him under her hat again. Together the group looked down into the ancient portal.

It was time to enter.

Chapter 21 - Through the Portal

On the count of three, Sir, Ivy, and Greely would all jump down the portal.

0,

1.

2,

Ivy jumped.

...

Okay, then on the count of 3, Sir and Greely would jump.

1,

2,

3.

Greely and Sir jumped down, falling through space and watching the worlds zip by them. Soon they arrived at the end and they met Ivy. She was staring up.

"Guys, you might want to see this."

In front of them was a huge volcano, miles high. Lava oozed from the sides and stormclouds cloaked the sides of the mountain, and flaming phantoms spewed from the sides. Greely stared at in awe.

"Its... like... a dream..." He muttered.

Sir stared at Greely.

Greely took a good look at the volcano and said, "This should be easy. For me at least. Just sneak in, learn everything, and leave..."

Sir was mad at Greely, no matter how much he felt sorry for him.

"Greely, this mission is much more important than your petty desire for the phantom's power. The phantoms have stolen a very important piece of technology, and they can use it to travel to any dimension. If they manage to fix it, they will travel to every alternate Jamaa, maybe even any alternate dimension they can find, and they will destroy and pollute. And they will not hesitate to kill. With that device they can create a 2 way portal, anywhere. Without your help, thousands, if not millions, will die. Greely, I beg of you that you help us,"

Greely had been sitting on a rock ledge, and after Sir finished talking, he turned around.

"This is the one chance to learn all their secrets, and you want to take it away from me?" he snapped.

Ivy was shocked. One minute Greely was their friend. The next minute, he wants to leave them for his own gain. He can't be trusted, she thought.

Sir was very busy. He had found the coordinates of this Phantom Dimension, so he could travel back whenever he needed to. But he felt like he was betraying Greely. This is the one chance to learn all their secrets, and you want to take it away from me? His words echoed in Sir's head. Sir looked over to Greely.

"Are you going to help us or not?"

Greely turned around again, and glared at Sir.

"Yes, but at a price. You must share any information you find with me, and you must not take credit for it."

Sir knew it was a bad thing to agree to, but he agreed anyway. It was their only chance.

Greely stood up and walked towards Sir and Ivy. He was much stronger than he was back in the tunnels, and he stood up in front of Sir.

"Well, what are we waiting for?"

Sir, Ivy, and Greely trekked over the rocky pathways, with the hot sun beaming down on them. They would admit the sunlight is better than the dark, musty air of the tunnels, but they were all still miserable. They were starting to get nearer the mountain, however, there were a lot of phantoms in their way.

"We have to do something about that," said Sir.

Sir opened a portal to some sort of interdimensional storage and pulled out a sniper rifle. He loaded it and got it ready to shoot, and aimed it at one of the patrolling phantoms.

By the way, the reason Sir didn't open his portals to get supplies back in the tunnels is because of a huge protection spell that prevents all portals except the ancient one from opening...

He pulled the trigger.

No more phantom.

He did the same for every other phantom, and not one suspected it was the chimera with the sniper rifle down at the bottom of the mountain. Soon the face of the volcano was cleared, and Sir put his rifle back into storage, and then pulled out several sandwiches.

"Who wants a sandwich?" he asked.

The three sat down and ate sandwiches. Jeremy was awake by now, but sadly, he cannot eat sandwiches.

Greely didn't seem to like the sandwich.

Sir wanted to say something like, Would you prefer kibble? But he decided against being rude to Greely, because it would only make matters worse. After Sir and Ivy had finished their sandwiches, Greely threw the remains of his sandwich off the side of the volcano.

They continued on the path towards the base of the mountain, and there was a lot of wind and a huge updraft. Ivy was too scared to look down, and Jeremy clung onto her to avoid being blown away. Eventually they had made it to the other side of the mountain, and the sun was setting. They started to see the sides of the mountain glow brilliant purple, and bolts of bright cyan electricity arced from each glowing purple spot.

No matter how nasty the phantoms were, some of the things they did were just beautiful.

Ivy pulled Jeremy out from under her hat. He was glowing too.

"What is going on?" whispered Ivy.

Even Greely was mesmerized by the glowing phantoms.

Suddenly, a huge black cloud flew over them. They all ducked down behind some rocks, and watched as thousands of phantoms streaked across the sky. Ivy hid Jeremy so the other phantoms couldn't see his purple glow.

"I think the phantoms from the volcano are glowing so the other phantoms can find their way home, like a beacon or something," said Sir. "If they saw Jeremy glowing, they would probably try to go towards him. Good thinking, Ivy!"

Even Greely had never seen anything like this. Phantoms behaved much differently in their world than in his world.

After the cloud of phantoms had disappeared, the group sprinted for the base of the volcano. The purple glow died down, and it was pitch black outside the mountain, and the only light came from the warm glow of the molten rock inside. Ivy, Sir, and Greely sneaked into the mountain, but strangely, there was not a phantom in sight.

"Don't let your guard down, this could be a trap," whispered Sir.

Lava poured from cracks in the ceiling and pooled on the floor. Pods, eggs, and sprouts covered parts of the ceiling, nestled around the warm lava. Behind them, Sir heard a noise, and he told them to hide. They all jumped behind a piece of gray-orange rock and looked out the entrance of the volcano. Where they had first arrived, the ancient portal opened once again, but this time much wider. The Phantom Queen came from the portal, surrounded by many guards. She crawled down the mountain pathways and entered the volcano. Sir, Ivy, and Greely were very quiet, and they tried to keep their eyes off of The Queen. If they looked at her too long, she could possibly take control of them, like she did with Greely earlier. In fact, she might have been in control of Greely for many years before that... Maybe Greely wasn't keeping The Hive secret on purpose.

The guards led The Queen through a hidden door, and Sir, Ivy, and Greely sneaked in behind them.

On the inside of the volcano it was almost completely hollow, and swarms of phantoms flew through the emptiness and horrible black goop flowed constantly out of pipes that had openings more than 6 feet across. Below them was lava, mixed with blobs of oily goo and slime. The Queen was being led to the very top of the volcano, which was most likely the location of the royal thrones, and maybe also the location of the stolen technology. The spiral path up to the top of the volcano was being constantly patrolled, and it was full of traps.

"Oh my." said Ivy.

"There has to be another way up," whispered Sir.

Greely and Ivy helped Sir look for a different route up, but it didn't look like there was one. Sir thought that they could climb up the pipes, but many of the pipes were too hot to touch. After a while, Ivy found a pipe with a ladder on it that wasn't hot, and the group climbed up. There was a phantom at the top of the pipe, but Sir quickly grabbed it and threw it into the bottom of the volcano.

Jeremy was hiding under Ivy's hat again, and he was terrified. He was trying very hard to resist the control of The Queen, and it drove him mad.

"Hang in there, Jeremy," Ivy whispered to him.

Soon the group was halfway up the volcano, and things were going pretty well. Sir got out a bag of trail mix, and Greely refused to take any. Ivy loved it, though, and she ate almost half the bag. Surprisingly, no matter how many sunflower seeds Ivy threw at a phantom, it never noticed her.

They actually had a pretty great time in the volcano, a lot better than it was in The Hive. About 6 hours later, it was 5:00 in the morning, and they were almost to the very top. They found an exit near the top, and took it, then went up the volcano the rest of the way from the outside. When they reached the top, it was flat and empty like a plateau, and they stayed hidden by staying right beneath the top of the volcano, peeking up to see what was on top.

There were two thrones, one for the phantom King, and another, larger throne, for the Queen. The two royal phantoms were both in their thrones, apparently discussing something. In front of them was a nasty looking, polluted piece of technology. It had a large ring, however it was split in half with wires hanging from the exposed insides of the ring. A control panel laid beneath the ring, with shattered screens and many buttons missing.

A little while after Sir, Ivy, and Greely had arrived, storm clouds and lightning started to gather around the top. The King and Queen rose from their throne, and stood in front of the portal.

The portal was almost done being repaired.

Static and lightning was everywhere. Most of it was coming from The Queen, but some of it was coming from the clouds and the King as well. It nearly fried Ivy, and thankfully she was paying enough attention to get out of the way. The group climbed to the other side of the top where they could see the King and Queen from the front, and Sir took out a random harpoon from storage. He pulled it up, and at first it was aimed for the Queen, but then he put it up. He couldn't do it!

He had a better idea, actually. He took some tools and sneaked over to the portal. He started to quietly pry it open, and he had to undo something the phantoms could never fix. He dug deeper into the portal, until he was inside the lower part of it. He made his way to the center of the metal room, until he could no longer see the exit. The room was actually very large, about 30 feet long, 8 feet tall, and 10 feet wide, but it was covered in wires and energy sources and hard drives and all sorts of things. When Sir reached the center, he found the Interdimensional Relative DImensional Stationary Space Hyperdrive. This device is in the center of all stationary portals. Sir knew exactly how to destroy it safely, quietly, and quickly. He took the special chip out of the panel, and snapped it in half. Next he pulled several cords out in this order: red, white, green, blue, yellow. After the cords were safely removed, Sir reached into the IRDSSH, and pulled out its main core. He stuffed the core into his own storage portal, and calmly left the command station.

(Now, in case you were confused, he didn't go through the portal, he went inside of its command station and took it apart)

However, Sir was spotted. Not by his friends, but by the Phantom King himself! The phantoms had tried to turn the portal on right after Sir broke it, and the King was sent to go check out what was wrong with it.

The King screeched and jumped back, but then his fear quickly shifted to anger, and he raised his arms to the sky, and lightning bolts ripped through the air around them.

The ground rumbled.

The King had started an eruption.

Sir opened a portal to his house as a hole collapsed in the top of the volcano. The portal fell in, and Sir jumped to the edge of the plateau before he fell with it. The king hovered above the big hole, and flaming phantoms started spewing out.

Ivy refused to get in Sir's portal.

"Ivy! There's not much time left! We have to go NOW!" Sir yelled.

Ivy lifted up her hat. Jeremy was not there.

Greely was not beside her, either.

Sir stopped and stared. Greely had taken Jeremy.

Ivy's eyes started to tear up. "There's no time left, is there?" she said.

Sir looked at her, and said, "We might have just enough time..."

They raced down the inside of the mountain as fast as they could, with the Phantom King following them, not far behind. Flaming phantoms landed behind them, in front of them, and rocks tumbled down from the walls. Lava and steam was spewing out from the bottom in big geysers. The ground rumbled and shook, and one side of the mountain had collapsed. However, it revealed an ancient phantom library, also known as a gold mine for Greely.

"Over there!" Ivy shouted.

Sir and Ivy ran the opposite direction, straight into the phantom King. They ducked right under him, and he barely had time to turn around before Ivy and Sir had reached the library.

What they saw horrified them.

Greely had both his back legs smashed under the rubble, and he couldn't move. He had been holding about ten books, which might have slowed him down. They were now knocked over into a large pile.

He said to Sir,

"I'm sorry... Please.. forgive me.... I'm sorry... for... for everything...."

Greely pushed the pile of books away with all the energy he had left, revealing Jeremy. Jeremy was not in good shape at all, and Ivy rushed to pick him up and place him under her hat.

Sir tried to lift the rubble off of Greely, but it had melted together. It was no use to try to save him now, for the Phantom King had finally found the destroyed library, and he crashed through the remaining wall. He raised his arms to smash Ivy, but then Sir quickly grabbed Ivy and pulled her through a portal to his house.

He had barely closed the portal when the volcano exploded. Small amounts of flames and debris shot from the portal right before it closed, and Sir and Ivy were laying on the floor, exhausted and terrified.

Jeremy slowly opened his eye and crawled from Ivy's hat.

PART 2

Chapter 22 - The End of the Beginning

It had really only just begun.

When the volcano erupted, Greely was killed. For good.

Sir couldn't go one day without remembering Greely's last words. They haunted him. Was Greely really his friend?

The other 5 Alphas were very disturbed. The exact moment Greely died, their hearts skipped a beat, and they knew exactly what happened... They knew the Phantom King was dead, and that was positive, but they also knew Greely had died with him.

Peck was hurt the most.

"Ya know he wasn't really that nice to people. He was uh, really secretive and stuff. He probably cheated and stole things... but... You never know how much you need somebody until they are gone."

She threw her paintbrush next to Greely's memorial. They didn't have his body, but they had never felt closer to him. There were cards, gifts, and candles sent from all over Jamaa.

A couple weeks after Greely's death, Sir Gilbert and Liza went to go clean out his old home. Sir Gilbert was collecting papers from Greely's desk, but then he came across a small yellow slip. It looked like it had been written a few days ago. It read:

I'm not as nice as I used to be. If anyone finds this letter, it probably means I'm dead. I don't know why I have been so angry lately. I used to love having fun with my friends... Like Sir Gilbert. We would talk about our life, and laugh at our mistakes... But something about me snapped. I started to turn my back on him, and he never wanted to talk to me anymore.

The less people talked to me, the angrier I became. I had one chance left, but I blew it. His name was Sir. I tried to talk to him but my anger caused me to attack him... But no matter what I did to him he always wanted to visit me again. He was a true friend, but I only pushed him away. I learned that when I don't have faith, the people around me lose theirs as well. I regret being so... primitive.

All I did was push the world away from myself. Don't blow your chances away. Be a true friend.

I want to forgive Sir. If I am dead, I want you to give him credit for who he is. Every discovery I was credited for, was actually discovered by him... He deserved it, not me! Sir is the true hero and friend!

Please, forgive me.... I'm sorry, for everythinG

The G at the end of the sentence looked like it was written very roughly, as if the pen was jammed into the paper as hard as it could be.

It turns out Greely had written this note right before he had gone on a wild chase after Sir and Ivy. He had barely finished writing it and putting it away before he ran after them like a vicious animal.

When Sir heard the news he freaked out. He was excited to have a nice new home, but even more excited to learn some of Greely's secrets. He had always wondered what made him so... greedy. But when Sir read Greely's note, he wanted to cry. He never realized Greely wanted to be his friend, after all he had done to Sir.

But Sir was kind of worried to move into the mountain. He had seen The Queen return to her hive, and he knew his mission wasn't over yet.

If Sir wasn't careful, The Queen could take over him like she took over Greely. Sir's hand was shaky, so he gently placed the note back on the table. He sighed. He saw some kind of frame, however covered by more papers and dust. He brushed away the papers and pulled the frame out.

In it was something nobody knew about before.

There was a photo of Greely's family.

Sir's talon was shaking so much while holding the picture that it rattled around like a broken washing machine. Maybe he had too much coffee. Maybe it was just too much emotion all at once.

Greely was in the middle of the picture. He had a nice coat on, and he was considerably younger. He looked as if he was still a puppy. His parents wore fancy coats and dresses as well, and his mother also had a pillbox hat and a lily on her ear. They looked like some New York family from the 1800's.

They were probably from Jamaa's equivalent of that era.

But, the most shocking feature of the painting was right in plain sight. How had nobody wondered about it before?

Greely's father was holding a puppy, who looked to be only a few weeks old. It was wrapped in pink blankets, with beautiful, metallic thread patterns of butterflies and vines. This meant that Greely had a younger sister, or a younger brother whose parents really want him to like pink butterflies.

What if she shared part of Mira's and Zio's soul as well? Is that a thing shared by family members?

If she did, then she would possibly be a half-immortal, and Sir might be able to find her.

Oh, you are probably wondering what a half-immortal is! A half-immortal is something I just made up someone who will live forever, but they can still be harmed by normal harmful things, and they usually can't be revived (unless they are super lucky). Its like only being half-immortal! ...

Of course Sir wasn't going to go off on a wild goose chase. He was going to do this quickly and quietly. Well, not really quickly. But very quietly.

He didn't actually do it, really.

You know, lets talk about some different characters until Sir can do something productive.

Chapter 23 - A long time ago, in a universe, far far away...

She ran. She didn't want them to catch her.

She had something so AWESOME!!!

But the other guys were jerks and they didn't want her to have it.

She reached a ledge that led into a deep abyss. She turned around, with the other guys right behind her.

She quickly reached down to her boots, and pushed a button, activating the rockets located in them. She shot way across the gap, using the plumes of feathers on her arms to steer herself towards a metal beam emerging from the other side of the gap. She landed perfectly on it.

However, the other guys had rocket boots as well. Theirs were really fast too, if not faster. Huge mech wings unfolded from their backs, and they sped up towards her.

"Gotta go!!" she said.

She sped through the rest of the R.S. Pterosaur. WAY above her were thick glass windows, designed to withstand the vacuum of space. This was a HUGE spacecraft. She wondered where the gap back there went, and how such a huge gap could exist in just one spaceship. She also wondered why-

TREE!!!

She ran into a tree. What is a tree even doing on this ship!?

"hi Orca." he said.

"AHHHHHH Tree, why did you follow me here?! I'm in the middle of something IMPORTANT!!!" She ran right around Tree, then sped off.

Right after she ran away, several mech-suited guys with green leather coats and cool goggles flew past tree. They also had beaks.

Tree just stood there for a bit to try to get to his senses.

Then he started trying to keep up with Orca. "ORCAAA WAAIT WHAT ABOUT MEEE?" he screamed.

Orca didn't turn around once. She was too busy doing awesome stunts and flips from hanging cables, and tricking the weird bird guys into flying into each other. After they were all knocked out, she slid down to the floor and walked over to Tree.

Tree was breathing heavily.

"Hi... Orca.... How's.... it.... going...?"

She replied politely, "Its goin' great."

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"FAR AWAY." she said abruptly.

She scrambled away from tree, towards the main control center of the spaceship. "But... wha abou me-"

More weird bird guys with mech suits flew past him. He wondered why they were so mad at Orca.

Orca ran and jumped over more and more wires and also wrecked a tea party on her way towards the cockpit. She took out her trusty laser-rifle and smacked the bird guy pilots in the head with it, and moved her clawed finger over towards the eject cockpit button. But she didn't. She couldn't leave Tree here with all these crazy bird guys.

She deployed a turret down to keep any more bird guys out of the cockpit, and started to run back to Tree. She ran on top of the tea party bird people's heads as they were cleaning up the mess she made, and they faceplanted into the tea-stained floor from the weight of her. She jumped right over the mech bird guys as they came flying towards her, and grabbed Tree's leg root thing. She pulled him towards the cockpit, right through the bird guys. His branches knocked them all out of the air.

Wires tangled all over Tree as Orca yanked him through the crazy wire rooms. The tea party bird people were just getting themselves back up and dusting themselves off as a reptilian thing and a tree trampled them back into the floor.

Orca threw tree into a seat and then took a seat of her own. She quickly entered numbers and pushed buttons on a strange holographic panel, which then closed itself. An airlock closed behind them, and then the cockpit ejected itself from the rest of the ship. This was only 1 of the 500 cockpits on the R.S. Pterosaur, but it was good enough as an escape pod for her and Tree.

Backup rockets activated on the back of the ejected cockpit, and shot out bright yellow flames, which cooled down and turned into smaller green flames. The cockpit then entered hyperdrive.

Somewhere on the exotic planet Retipuj, a species of bird people, called the Drazzub, wondered why a cockpit just randomly ejected from one of their main space stations and flew off into hyperspace. One of the Drazzubs looked at the cockpit docking and ejecting schedules. There was nothing scheduled for today.

Oh well. The pilots of the Retipuj Ship Pterosaur don't always inform the Great Schedule Maker of their doings.

Chapter 24 - Celebrate Good Times

When Orca made a nice bumpy landing on a remote part of her planet Raptoria's surface, she gave Tree a high-five, and then got out. She pulled something strange out of one of her pockets. Tree didn't really give it a second thought and just made his way for the nearest tree-rest-stop. Orca went back into the ship and entered, SUPER-SECRET-DRAZZUB-PASSWORD-OF-AWESOMENESS. It opened a super secret menu, and Orca selected the settings: Self Destruction Options > 50 Seconds > Leave no trace.

She hopped out of the cockpit, and about 50 seconds later, the whole thing exploded, and left no trace, except a big pile of debris and ash. There is no way the Drazzubs are going to go looking for this pile of trash.

Orca tossed a little shiny white and green thing around in her claws. She stuck it back into her pocket and then pressed a button on her wristband thing. She waited a couple minutes, then her own spacecraft landed in the clearing next to her. She hopped in, turned the stereo on, and jammed her favorite Raptorian tunes.

This was one of the most successful missions she had ever been on. But then suddenly, Sir contacted Orca with a text chat program. Orca turned her music down and answered it.

=RandomCharacters contacted theorca55 at 3:08 P.M.=

RandomCharacters: hey orca how's it going

theorca55: don't call me orca please.

RandomCharacters: Why?

RandomCharacters: what happened?

theorca55: im really upset

theorca55: do you remember that april fools joke

theorca55: it was really cruel

theorca55: try telling that joke to your family and see how they react.

RandomCharacters: I completely forgot about that orca im so sorry...

theorca55: No you're not. you would haven't said it if you didn't mean it.

RandomCharacters: im sorry orca ok i wrote that thing in the middle of the night!! i drank too much caffeine and it was like 1 in the morning and i didnt want you to be lonely on april fools so i wrote that and i didnt mean it to hurt your feelings

RandomCharacters: And I apologize for my informal chat messages. I am having a bad day.

theorca55: oh did you hurt somebody else!?

RandomCharacters: I guess I did... Wolfy blocked me.

theorca55: you are so rude to your friends you know that right

RandomCharacters: ...

RandomCharacters: Did you get the chip?

theorca55: i did. im not giving it to you though because you are a selfish jerk! i should have just left tree for dead!

theorca55: leave me alone!

=theorca55 hung up on RandomCharacters at 3:12 P.M.=

Orca threw her fancy coconut celebration drink on the floor. She couldn't believe Sir had been her friend this long and didn't contact her until he needed something from her. He is so selfish.

She slammed her tablet computer onto the command center table. She removed Sir from every buddy list she knew of, and erased every picture of him she had. She had a framed picture of herself, Sir, and Count next to her bed. She threw it into the incinerator. Count didn't talk to her either anyway.

She jumped into her bed and pulled the dark green-blue covers over her head.

Then she started to cry.

Chapter 25 - A New Threat

Sir stared blankly at his computer screen. Did that really just happen? He had forgotten about the dumb april fools joke. He had pretended to be mad at her for not subscribing to him, then ended the rant with "APRIL FOOLS."

Just thinking about that dumb joke made him want to cry too.

He also remembered that he had joined another online community his friend "Wolfy" told him about. She blocked him on that site because he was "clogging up her userpage with comments."

Sir started to feel like none of his friends cared about him anymore.

Greely's words would echoed in Sir's mind...

"I'm sorry... Please.. forgive me.... I'm sorry... for... for everything...."

But despite all these disagreements with friends, there was something far more horrible bothering Sir.

The Prophecy.

Ahrk fin kel lost prodah, [and the Scrolls have foretold]

Do ved viing ko fin krah, [of black wings in the cold]

Tol fod zeymah win kein meyz fundein.... [that when brothers wage war come unfurled]

...Wait a minute.. Wrong prophecy.

Here is the real prophecy:

And when the shadows are bound,

And when peace will be found,

The ghost of time will awaken...

And when he runs

Across the worlds,

Then the very fabric of time will be shaken...

One by one people will fall,

Under his powerful claw.

The Bane of Time shall rise!

Sir knew what this meant. When peace returned to the entire multiverse, even for a split second, then a horrible deity would be released from the 5th dimension into the 3rd dimension, and wreak havoc on everybody.

Wait, let me explain the organization of the multiverse.

There are infinite dimensions separated into dimensional classes. There is the 1st dimensional class [1D], 2nd dimensional class [2D], 3rd dimensional class [3D], and so on. In each dimensional class are dimensions that match up to that class. Homestuck fits into the 2nd dimensional class, and Reality fits into the 3rd dimensional class. There aren't any notable examples of 1st dimensional dimensions though. Sorry.

There are millions of dimensions in each class, and in each of these dimensions is a group of universes, which is actually a multiverse. There are actually multiple multiverses. A multiverse is a group of extremely similar alternate universes. Some multiverses are much larger than others, and sometimes multiverses will split apart and create two separate dimensions.

So to avoid confusion, when I mean every dimension, and not every universe, I will say the Multiverse instead of multiverse from now on.

My entire point is, the Bane of Time is a threat to the entire 3rd dimension, not just a threat to a multiverse. Its just so hard to explain... Anyways, lets return to the story.

Sir was trying to get the ancient chip from the Drazzub that the Drazzub got from an ancient extinct species of bi҉rd men. With this chip he could possibly stop the Bane of Time, but now that his old friend refuses to give it to him, the 3rd dimension is probably screwed.

Chapter 26 - A Party of Tea for a Party of Two

Mister Happycamper was wearing a crystal monocle and his fanciest blue tuxedo. His kind brother Expert had a tuxedo on as well, yet his was purple. His bright purple scarf was tied very neatly around his neck.

"Oh, dear brother!" they said to one another, at the same exact time.

Mister then said, "I am afraid our efforts to seem gentle-man-ly may be quite the failure."

Expert adjusted his monocle. "Indeed, indeed. Our fancy speech patterns, fancy clothes, and tea might as well just be a gag of some terrible sort."

Mister nodded. "Indeed, indeed, indeed."

Expert nodded some more. "Indeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed."

The two stared blankly at each other. Mister's monocle slid off of his face and landed in his tea cup. He looked down at the tea that had been splattered all over his tuxedo.

Expert grinned.

....Wait, do they even have visible mouths?

Where's his mouth?

Nevermind. Lets just focus on the telling of this story.

I can't tell if I am narrating these events as they happen, or if I am just retelling my autobiography... Oh well. It probably doesn't matter in a dimension that is already so screwed up anyway. Universes have separate timelines, after all.

Mister furiously tore off his tuxedo and readied his hoof, just about to smack that non-visible grin off of his brother's face, when a gigantic white-hot lightning bolt streaked and spread across almost the entire sky with an extremely loud, BANGCRASHBOOMSLASHBAM!!

Mister froze into place. He nearly fainted.

Expert was so surprised, he froze as well. Drool dripped from his non-visible mouth. He didn't wipe it off and risk moving. When deer are scared, they freeze. They think you cant see them if they don't move. But sadly, Mister and Expert are quite colorful and anyone could probably see them even through thick brush and scrub.

Mister blinked his eyes in an effort to communicate with Expert through morse code. A quick blink was a dot, and a longer blink was a dash.

.. / .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .-- --- -. -.. . .-. / .-- .... . .-. . / - .... . / .-.. .. --. .... - -. .. -. --. / -.-. .- -- . / ..-. .-. --- --

Expert blinked to respond.

.. / -.. --- -. - / -.- -. --- .-- / . .. - .... . .-.

Mister thought for a bit, then blinked some more.

-- .- -.-- -... . / .. - ... / -.- .- .-. -- .- / -... . -.-. .- ..- ... . / -.-- --- ..- / ... .--. .. .-.. .-.. . -.. / - . .- / --- -. / -- -.-- / -. . .-- / - ..- -..- . -.. --- / -.-- --- ..- / .-. ..- -.. . / ..- ... . .-.. . ... ... / ... --- -. / --- ..-. / .- -....-

Before he could finish the last word, more lightning arced across the sky, even louder this time.

Mister stopped his message. When the sky was clear of lightning, he started a new conversation.

- .... .. ... / .. ... / --- -. . / -- .- -.. / - . .- / .--. .- .-. - -.--

Expert responded,

.. -. -.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . -..

Mister slowly relaxed and slid back into his chair. Even though he felt a bit safer now, he started blinking to Expert again. He was still too scared to speak.

-.. .. -.. / -.-- --- ..- / . ...- . .-. / -. --- - .. -.-. . / .-- . / .-- . .-. . / .. -. / - .... . / -- .. -.. -.. .-.. . / --- ..-. / .- / ... -.-. .- .-. -.-- / ..-. --- .-. . ... -

Expert's eyes widened.

.. / -.. --- -. - / .-.. .. -.- . / ... -.-. .- .-. -.-- / ..-. --- .-. . ... - ...

Mister looked back to Expert.

... .- -- .

Mister then slapped his brother.

.-- .... .- - / .-- .- ... / - .... .- - / ..-. --- .-. blinked Expert.

Mister sat back in his chair and continued to blink.

- .... . .-. . / .-- .- ... / .- / -... ..- --. / --- -. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / -. --- -. / ...- .. ... .. -... .-.. . / -- --- ..- - ....

Expert nodded. He was glad it wasn't something personal.

Suddenly, Mister "screamed" with his eyelid morse code.

...- .- ... .... .. .. .-. ...- .- ... .... .. .. .-. ...- .- ... .... .. .. .-.

He "screamed" again, but this time with a slightly different message.

...- .- ... .... .. .. .-. / .. ... / -.-. --- -- .. -. --.

Expert went cold. He hadn't heard that name blinked in centuries. Well, he wasn't centuries old. But he knew that the name hadn't been blinked in centuries by anybody else. Suddenly, he blinked super fast. This was the longest message he had ever blinked in his life.

.- -. -.. / .-- .... . -. / - .... . / ... .... .- -.. --- .-- ... / .- .-. . / -... --- ..- -. -.. --..-- / .- -. -.. / .-- .... . -. / .--. . .- -.-. . / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . / ..-. --- ..- -. -.. --..-- / - .... . / --. .... --- ... - / --- ..-. / - .. -- . / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .- .-- .- -.- . -. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- / .- -. -.. / .-- .... . -. / .... . / .-. ..- -. ... / .- -.-. .-. --- ... ... / - .... . / .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. ... --..-- / - .... . -. / - .... . / ...- . .-. -.-- / ..-. .- -... .-. .. -.-. / --- ..-. / - .. -- . / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . / ... .... .- -.- . -. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- / --- -. . / -... -.-- / --- -. . / .--. . --- .--. .-.. . / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / ..-. .- .-.. .-.. --..-- / ..- -. -.. . .-. / .... .. ... / .--. --- .-- . .-. ..-. ..- .-.. / -.-. .-.. .- .-- .-.-.- / - .... . / -... .- -. . / --- ..-. / - .. -- . / ... .... .- .-.. .-.. / .-. .. ... .

Mister's non-visible jaw dropped. He spoke aloud,

"Its the summoning of the-"

He slapped his hoof on his mouth to avoid "giving away his position to predators." Deer are very cautious. Even if ...- .- ... .... .. .. .-. .. ... paid no attention to deer, the brothers both feared anything else that might still be out there.

.-.. . - ... / --. . - / --- ..- - / --- ..-. / .... . .-. . / -... .-. --- blinked Expert.

Mister opened a special portal to Sir's house. Expert grabbed all of the gentle-man-ly items and leaped through the portal after Mister.

They both landed on the floor of Sir's house and the portal closed behind them.

Sir was sitting in his special alone chair. He rarely sits in it, even though it is his most comfortable chair.

Expert pranced over to Sir.

"Hey buddy. Why are you sitting on a chair-shaped cactus? Isn't that painful?"

Sir didn't even turn around, but he responded quietly, "Its not painful. Its comfortable."

Expert turned around to Mister and shrugged. Then Mister pranced up to the chair-cactus and asked Sir, "We just got in an awkward situation. A scary one. We were in Dark Scary Time Forest when some lightning appeared and nearly made us pass out from fear. We were so scared we decided to come here..."

Sir turned the chair quickly around. "You were there?" he said.

"Yep. We were both there," said Expert, trying to sound brave.

"Do you have any idea how much danger you were in?" asked Sir.

Mister and Expert just looked at the floor. They felt like they were in trouble.

Sir continued, "I knew something was up... But I had no idea you guys were witnessing it. Why did you even want to go to Dark Scary Time Forest?"

Mister slowly looked up. "We wanted to have a gentle-man-ly mad tea party...." Then he looked back down at the floor.

Sir sighed.

"You two could have been his first victims. How could you be so... oblivious?"

Expert responded, "We did speak in blinking, though. That's pretty cautious, am I right?" He dug his shoulder into Mister's side. Mister didn't budge.

Sir just glared at Expert.

Expert looked around frantically, then looked at Sir. He kind of thought that Sir was being a little meaner than usual. "Uhh, buddy, did somethin' bad happen that isn't related to Dark Scary Time Forest?"

Sir stopped glaring and then looked down at the floor. He pulled a thorn out on the chair and flicked it onto the floor.

He slowly looked up. "Did you guys... ever meet Orca?"

Mister and Expert had only seen her for a few minutes in person, but they both knew she was one of Sir's best friends and also a good mercenary.

"We kind of knew her I guess," said both Mister and Expert.

Sir took a deep breath and then gave them the bad news.

But he was lying.

He never lied.

But this was the one exception.

"She's dead."

Expert and Mister's eyes widened. They both instinctively blinked.

--- -- --.

Sir hated lying. He hated it so much. And he had only done it once... But it was for Orca's own good. Sort of. He didn't know if she would appreciate being known as deceased, but he was sure that she would be much happier if anyone annoying like Sir or similar to Sir stayed away from her. He hated saying that but he knew that she hated his guts and his friend's guts. He really regretted that april fools joke. At least it was caffeine, and not mead...

Mister and Expert's eyes teared up. They quickly hugged one another, staining each other's fur with a ridiculous amount of tears which poured from their eyes like a waterfall after a monsoon.

Sir hated seeing them like this... But it was for Orca's own good.

He got up from his chair and went into the kitchen. It was filled with flour, melted genetically modified chocolate chips, brown sugar, and vanilla extract. All the different ingredients were slathered across the table, floor, and ceiling, Mighty was in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a hand-me-down chef hat he got from Sir. He was holding a wooden ladle, and he was trying to mix a huge bowl of batter with it.

"Mighty, that's not the kind of tool you use to stir cookie dough..."

Mighty paid no attention to Sir's advice. Instead, he continued to stir faster and harder with the ladle, to no avail.

Sir sighed and ripped the ladle from Mighty's paws. His arms still moved in a circle as if he was still trying to stir with the ladle.

Sir snapped his fingers in front of Mighty's face. Nothing happened.

He noticed that Mighty's eyes were... Kind of bulging from his head... And the whites of his eyes were kind of pink.

"Not this again..." mumbled Sir. Sir was about to pick Mighty up and drag him out of the room, but then Mighty dashed for the cupboards and grabbed more ingredients to fill the bowl with, since he had previously stirred all of the ingredients onto the floor. He then grabbed the ladle from Sir's talons and continued to stir the cookie batter.

Sir just gave up, and watched Mighty continue to fail at cookies. He cleaned up the room and salvaged the onslaught of lumpy cookie dough and fashioned it into some nasty floor-flavored cookies. Sir gave them to Mighty, which delighted him.

Mighty quickly threw all the dishes into the sink. His eyes slowly returned to normal as he munched on the horrible floor cookies (which he gets credit for. Sir makes amazing cookies if Mighty doesn't ruin the kitchen first).

Soon every cookie was gone and Mighty thanked his Master. Then he waddled over to his room and collapsed on the floor.

Mighty suffers from a strange thing known as cookiensomia. If he doesn't eat a cookie once every 3 hours, he will suffer from strange effects similar to the effects of sleep deprivation, and he may also start to hallucinate.

He is the only living being ever to be legitimately diagnosed with cookiensomia.

Chapter 27 - Through Random's Eyes

I was sitting in front of my computer and I was humming one of my favorite songs. Halfway through the song I started to sing it out loud...

"NOW THESE POINTS OF DATA MAKE A BEAUTIFUL LINE

AND WE'RE OUT OF BETA WE'RE RELEASING ON TIM-"

But, I was interrupted by something... Sir was contacting me!!

=RandomCharacters contacted avianMammalian at 6:14 P.M.=

avianMammalian: OH MY GOD HI SIR!!! I havent seen you in FOREVERRR 😄 😁

RandomCharacters: Oh! Hi there Random!

avianMammalian: 😝

avianMammalian: so uhh remember how much i used to want your username? lol

avianMammalian: it was like your name had my name in it

RandomCharacters: Actually Random, didn't you come up with this name?

avianMammalian: I DID ??? 😐

RandomCharacters: Yes.

avianMammalian: THEN HOW COME YOU HAVE the name and not me ?? 😒 sorry caps.

RandomCharacters: Because you didn't want to use this chat program at the time, and you were helping me create a name for my account.

avianMammalian: well i like this name anyway no big deal 😇

avianMammalian: i am an avian mammal reptile anyways lol but i couldnt make my name avianMammalianReptile because thats waaay too long. i regret not usin this program earlier tho 😊

RandomCharacters: I know how you feel.

avianMammalian: so........ did you contact me because you needed to tell me something important??? 😎

RandomCharacters: Yes, I did.

avainMammalian: so what is it 😖...

RandomCharacters: Orca is dead.

avianMammalian: 😡😢😓😞

avianMammalian: sorry for all the emoticons i just dont know what to say about this!! this is really sad news

RandomCharacters: I know.

RandomCharacters: Are you in my house?

avianMammalian: yes i am but i was thinking about going somewhere like maybe ... idk

RandomCharacters: Please do not go anywhere outside this domain. The 3rd Dimension is in grave danger. And the 1st, 2nd, and 4th dimensions might also be in horrible danger. My house is in the 3 ½ dimension which is not accessible to anybody but my closest friends. This is probably the safest place in the entire Multiverse right now...

avianMammalian: whoa the Multiverse not multiverse???????? TAHTS RIDICULOUS!!!!! and cool!!!

RandomCharacters: There is something happening, called the Emergence. An ancient deity known as the Bane of Time is entering the 3rd dimension from his home dimension so he can destroy any interlopers.

avianMammalian: interlopers??

RandomCharacters: Nowadays, interloper means someone who travels outside their own universe. Almost everybody has been an interloper at least once, and the Bane of Time seeks to spill the blood of anyone who had ever disturbed interdimensional space.

avianMammalian: holy ●●●●!!!

RandomCharacters: Thankfully, all of the "in-between dimensional classes" are safe from him... Sadly those classes are very rare and not many people live in them.

RandomCharacters: That's why I contacted you. I might need your help to stop the Bane of Time.

avianMammalian: omg that sounds really cool im in!! but it also seems dangerous sooo...

RandomCharacters: I have to go now. I will speak with you about this matter later.

=RandomCharacters stopped contacting avianMammalian at 6:22 P.M.=

I turned off my computer and left my house. The sky was really pretty today. Well, it's always pretty. Since its in interdimensional space, cool dimensional energy stuff reacts with the atmospheric border thingy and makes pretty Aurora Borealis in the sky. Sir also said that the "stars" that you can see all day long, even in the brightest light, are really entire universes. Its pretty cool seeing stars and Auroras in a light blue sky!

I love this place.

I made my way through the park and towards Sir's giant house. It was a really fantastic walk, even though I take it almost every day. There's a lot of exotic plants and animals here in the park. Its a HUGE park, by the way. It has a really odd shape because the houses and buildings border it and Sir's house is in the middle. My house is located inside the park, and I can tell you, it's a nightmare trying to keep my yard maintained. I don't even know where Sir gets these beautiful, but DEMONICLY SPREADING plants. They grow like, 4 feet a day!!

It took me about 40 minutes of walking to reach Sir's house, but I enjoyed almost every second of it! I rang the doorbell and Sir politely opened the door for me.

"I wasn't expecting you so soon, Random. Come in!" he said.

After walking into the house I said, "Hi Sir. You said we could talk about the thing later so I just decided to come to your house since it's easier than typing like a million words a second."

"I can see what you mean. I have a lot of cookies baked if you want any!" Sir pointed to a plate full of delicious warm homemade genetically-modified-chocolate chip cookies. "Be careful, we don't want Mighty to know about these. In about an hour, he might need another cookie."

I looked around the house and then said, "I remember. Doesn't he like need to eat a cookie every several hours or he goes insane?"

"Yep." Sir grabbed a cookie to eat.

I grabbed one to eat as well. "These are really good! Isn't the chocolate genetically modified so that dogs can eat it without getting sick?"

Sir nodded. "It sure is!" He took another bite from his cookie.

Suddenly, Mighty emerged from his room and staggered over to the cookie plate. He grabbed them and ate them one by one, bite by bite. I ate the rest of mine quickly before he could take it from me, and Sir ate the cookies he had left in one bite.

Mighty sure adds a lot of stress to Sir's cookie business.

Mighty's drowsy look faded away and he looked at me and wagged his bushy brown tail.

"Hey Master, who is this?" he said, excitedly.

"This is Random," said Sir. "He comes here often, but you are usually asleep when he visits..."

Mighty ran up to me and jumped on the couch. He sniffed me.

"You ate one of my cookies, didn't you?" suddenly, he shouted to Sir. "Master, he ate one of my cookies! He is a thief!!"

Sir shook his head and smiled. "Mighty, he is no thief. I made a batch of cookies specifically for him and I to enjoy, then you came in and ate most of them... I believe you are the true thief."

Mighty's jaw dropped. "Oh no Master... I am so sorry..."

Mighty laid on the floor and looked up at Sir. Sir said to him, "Oh Mighty, you are not in trouble! Just pay attention to whose cookies you are eating next time."

Mighty jumped up off the floor and wagged his tail. "Okay, Master!"

I actually don't think he is going to remember that advice.

"Okay Random," said Sir. "Do you have any ideas?"

I can't believe Sir was asking for ideas. He never needs ideas, usually he can come up with them by himself...

"I need to find a way to stop the Bane of Time.... Orca had a special chip with her, and the chip was the most crucial part of stopping the Bane of Time. But now that Orca is gone, we might not have a chance to stop him."

The thought of the Bane of Time just being able to run around killing interlopers sickened me.

"He is a freakin' GOD! How are we gonna stop him?" I screeched.

"That remains a mystery," said Sir. "We might have to find alternate chips. The chips we are searching for are ancient knowledge recorded by ancient intelligent beings who used to worship the gods and creatures of the 5th dimension."

Sir continued to lecture me of these interesting ancient beings. "I may be smarter than the ancient beings in many ways, but they were smarter than me in many ways as well. If I could use their knowledge, combined with my knowledge, then we might just be able to stop the Bane of Time."

Sir took out an ancient book and handed it to me. I could barely make out the letters, but I could kind of make out this one sentence:

I a҉m on҉e ҉of the most cunning҉ of men, but I a҉m bu҉t an҉ idi҉ot child co҉mp҉ar҉ed to ҉the dulle҉st҉ of t҉he҉ ҉d҉҉w҉e҉m҉e҉r

[I am one of the most cunning of them, but I am but an idiot child compared to the dullest of the ??????]

"How smart are these... things the guy is talking about?" I asked.

Sir looked at me and responded, "Smart enough to make robots and automatons before the other people around them had electricity... They were super advanced for their time."

Chapter 28 - Tree

(The story is no longer in Random's point of view)

Tree gently stepped through the bushes and flowers surrounding his house. He reached his long neck over a patch of phlox, and tilted the watering can he was holding. Water drizzled down onto the phlox and the plants quickly absorbed it. After making sure the phlox was no longer thirsty, he wobbled slowly over to his patch of petunias, marigolds, and daffodils. He watered them in the same exact way.

He gently set the watering can down on his porch. Then he picked up and carried a bag of sunflower seeds, thistle seeds, peanuts, dried apples, and raisins on his back. He went slowly over to his bird feeders, and the mockingbirds, blue jays, juncos, goldfinches, red-bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, squirrels, and chipmunks waited around him in a big, noisy circle of excited animals as he poured the huge sack into about seven different feeders, then poured the rest of the contents on the ground.

"Its all part of being a tree..." he said, softly.

Next he went inside his very small house (which was more of a hollowed out bluff with windows and furniture) and then journeyed his way to the kitchen. He mixed some sugar water in a classic cast iron pot, and then boiled it. After it cooled, he filled his makeshift hummingbird feeder and then hung it up next to a huge cluster of wisteria. A couple hummingbirds tried to drink from it, but they were much to displeased with each other to focus on eating. Instead, they peeped and chirped at each other, trying to scare one another away, but neither refused to leave. The area around the feeder grew tense. Some other birds stopped in their tracks to look at the immensely brave standoff between the two hummingbirds.

One of them made his first attack! He tried to slice the other with his long, spear-like beak, but the other one moved away in time, and his attacker missed.

Wait! I have some brief information to share with you. You see, these two hummingbirds come from two major hummingbird family trees, both thought to be long dead. One family was known as the Humfields, and the other family was known as the McFlys. These two hummingbird families have been in a feud for hundreds of years!

The hummingbird with the spear-like beak was a McFly! It was obvious, even though a hummingbird like that hadn't been seen in years. The other was a Humfield, because of his super fast reaction speeds and the blue-ish marks on his feathers. This was a rivalry that hadn't been seen near Tree's house before!!

The two hovered in the air above the feeder, each one preparing for his next strike.

The Humfield squeaked and peeped horrible, inappropriate insults in hummingbird language.

"Squee ******** chee chee **** ****** ********** ** chee!!" he cried.

Some of the mockingbirds, who learned languages very quickly, (including English), nearly fainted after hearing those words spoken. The McFly felt a little queasy after hearing them, too. But that didn't stop him from making another attack.

He zoomed towards the Humfield, and tried to poke him in his red, iridescent feathered throat. The McFly escaped once again, but the McFly's beak had torn away a few of the Humfield's feathers from his neck. This time, it was the McFly's turn to get some attention.

"Squee squee ************ Eee ************************* ***** chee ******************** **** ** ********* *** *** chee ***** ************ chee," said the McFly.

These words angered the Humfield. How dare the McFly insult his family like that?! He zoomed as fast as he could, straight for the McFly's chest. He was going so fast, that nobody had time to react-

except an unaware Tree.

Tree had been taking a fine walk through his yard, but as he was walking next to the wisteria, something small and sharp pierced the bark on his neck.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW" he screamed.

Tree quickly pulled a furious hummingbird out of his neck. It had felt like a tranquilizer dart...

The hummingbird's eyes widened. "Chee chee squee see squeee!"

Tree sighed. "Che, cheese, chooey, cheh." His hummingbird language was very bad, but the Humfield perfectly understood it, and hovered in front of his mortal enemy.

"Chee chooy..."

The McFly sat down on the rim of the feeder. "Chee chooy che..."

The Humfield sat down next to him, and started to drink the sugar water. After a little bit, the McFly joined in the feast.

Now, you're probably thinking, Oh what a happy ending, but sorry, that's not going to happen.

A female hummingbird landed on the other side of the feeder.

Both the Humfield and the McFly raised their heads and took a gander at her. She was so beautiful. But they realized, there was only one of her, and two of them...

They instantly started buzzing around and fighting again.

"CHEEE SQUEE CHEE CHE!!!!!!" they screamed at one another.

Tree just walked away. Believe it or not, this happens every day...

Chapter 29 - One True Pairing

A desk.

It stood in the middle of a dark empty room.

On it was a lamp. A lamp with a single lightbulb at the tip of a long, curly metal ribbon that suspended the bulb over the desk.

The bulb bobbed around in the air, illuminating folders and folders full of papers and stories.

Oh, what knowledge could be found in this marvelous desk?

Well, the answer is, not much.

A lightswitch was flipped and the whole room was now visible. A magenta colored canine with horns slowly made its way to the desk and sat down.

"I never finished this one," she said as she was holding a paper under the light. She took out a mechanical pencil and started writing on the page.

Behind her, a light blue chicken stood in the doorway in his pajamas. Strangely, this chicken had the head of a fox.

"Heey Lesley..." he murmured.

"Hey there Sage," she said.

Suddenly, the strange lamp on the desk swung around wildly, and the bulb suspended from it was bashed onto the ceiling, and therefore it broke.

"Uhh, I think you should fix that..."

"I'll fix it eventually, Sage! Gimme a second, ok... I'm working on this fanfic."

Sage jumped. "A fanfic?!"

"Its not finished yet!" snapped Lesley.

"Ok, then," said Sage, disappointed. He walked out of Lesley's room and into the hallway.

Then Lesley realized something.

She had been shipping the characters in the wrong quadrant!

This was the most terrible, awful, most disgusting thing she had ever done. You see, these two characters were supposed to be friends, not lovers, and because of her mistake, it appeared that these characters were in love and... Its just too gross.

Lesley stared in disgust. She can't rewrite this entire thing...

"HEY, BREAKFAST IS READY," yelled Sage.

Lesley covered her sacred shipping desk with a bedsheet, and then went down the hall and into the kitchen.

Today's breakfast: shriveled toast and brown crunchy omelets.

"We got a big day today," said Sage.

"Huh, why?" asked Lesley.

Sage stuffed omelets into his mouth, but stopped so he could respond. "That guy needs us. For something important..."

"He needs us AGAIN?" yelled Lesley.

Sage licked the tiny burnt toast crumbs off his plate, and then said,

"Yep."

Lesley just lost all hope for humanity... or canines... or whatevers, and faceplanted into the hardened breakfast arrangement on the table.

"Aww Lesley, c'mon, at least he's nice..."

"Yeah, but the adventures he drags us through are usually reeeaaally boring..."

Sage thought for a bit. "Ever think about how HE feels? I mean, he runs around trying to save the worlds, but all his friends just see him as an annoyance?"

Lesley grumbled, but it was too hard to understand because it was muffled by the burnt food...

"DANGIT LESLEY I THINK THOSE FANFICS ARE HURTING YOUR HEAD they are good tbtw."

Lesley lifted her head off of the plate. "I'm just in a bad mood, Sage... I don't wanna go anywhere... Not until that fanfic gets fixed."

"Lesley, those fanfics are consuming your soul."

"I don't care right now."

Sage put the dishes in the sink. "Fine, if that's what you say..."

"Moo."

Chapter 30 - Summer

Sir stood in front of his fantastic new house. Despite the fact that there was lots of work to do, he had to let his "family" have a nice home for the summer. I mean, who doesn't love a nice private beach and a huge house full of oceanic decor?

Dried coral hung on the walls and shells stood in glass cases. Taxidermy starfish and mollusks were pinned inside of boxes hung on the walls. The tables were made of glass, with old fishing line and ropes wrapped around their legs. Sure, it was a little tacky, but everyone loved it.

Mighty knocked on the door.

"Come in," Sir shouted.

Mighty walked inside, holding lots of suitcases and bags full of beach towels and sunglasses. "Good morning, Sir!" Mighty set the items next to the door. "I'm really excited to live in this house for the summer... It does seem awfully far away from the city, though..."

Sir put his talon on Mighty's shoulder. "Don't worry Mighty, if we need to, its just a quick motorboat ride back. It would only take about 30 minutes."

Mighty took some of his plushies and other prized possessions out of a bag, and then set them on the table. Mighty then sat on the couch. "This house is nice, Sir. Its a lot different than home..."

Suddenly, more knocks came on the door. Sir opened it, and his two friends, Random and Jetpack, came inside.

"Ay there, mate!" said Jetpack.

"Why, if it isn't Mister Jetpack Wackyfeet himself!" said Sir, delightfully.

"Ey, it is. I've been hearin' about this mighty place you've got for us, and I couldn't even think 'bout refusin' it. They all said its right on the beach, sandy and hot... kinda reminds me o' home."

"Glad you like it," said Sir. "As for you, Random?"

"I uhh... i'M REALLY EXCITED FOR THIS. hOW Many more people are coming?"

"I have no idea... But quite a lot. Get your stuff put up in the bedrooms, everyone! We need to make sure there's enough room for everyone." Sir helped Random carry the stuff up to the 2nd and 3rd floors, then he had to bribe Mighty with cookies to get him to put away his own stuff.

After Mighty and Random were on the couch, exhausted, more knocks came on the door.

"Who be it behind the door of thou houset?" cried a familiar voice outside.

Sir swung the door open, and there was his best friend, Prancing. "Aha, PRANCING! I'm so happy to see you!" Sir took Prancing's suitcases and set them next to the door. "But you don't have to talk so fancy. This is summertime, after all!"

Prancing sat on the couch. "Ah yes, but must I not speak very polite as well?"

Sir laughed. "No, you may."

Mighty was just confused by all these double negatives...

Another knock sounded.

Then Mighty asked, "Where are all these people coming from? I thought the boat ride took 30 minutes, not 2..."

"Well, maybe that boat is faster than I thought..." Sir opened the door.

.

..

...

....

"OH MY GOD! JUDE, IS THAT YOU?"

Jude jumped up and down with excitement. "Yes yes it IS me!! Hi Sir!" Jude set his stuff beside the door and leaped onto the couch.

Jetpack was super happy. "Ay there, mate, long time an' no see!"

"What's up, Jetpack?"

Jetpack's happiness died down a bit. "I don' really kno' anymore, friend. First they say Orca's dead, then we all move to the beach... Sure, the beach's nice, but I kinda wonder abou' whats goin' on in the other dimensions besides our own..."

"uH-Uh-uh-O-o-rca is DEAD?"

"I believe so, its what Sir has been reportin' to us."

"Oh my god... I'm sorry for the loss.. I just can't say..."

"Don't worry 'bout it, there's nothin' you could do 'bout it anyways..."

Jetpack sniffed.

.

After a couple more minutes, more knocks were heard.

Sir slowly opened the door.

Snickety came inside, followed by Explorer Loopylion, Tree, Admiral, Lieutenant, and several others. The very last one to fly in was a small blue bird, who landed on Sir's shoulder.

The bird ruffled his feathers and then said, "Uhh, you sure there's enough room for everyone?"

Sir nodded. "I'm sure..."

.

..

By evening, everyone had their stuff put away and their beds ready. They were now outside, roasting marshmallows, hot dogs, fish, and vegetables.

"Man, I sure wish I knew what a hot dog tasted like..." said Jetpack. "Its pretty hard bein' a herbivore."

Admiral Sunnybird frowned. "I know, right? I'm scared to try one... The doctor said its best to stay on a diet of just fish."

Snickety Cleverfoot looked at his hot dog and made a horrible face. "I feel. GUILtY, NOW. why. why do i eat HOT DOGS when Others cANt enjoy tHeir deliciousiousness?"

Snickety threw his hot dog in the fire and replaced it with some marshmallows. "At leaST everOne cAn enjoy. thesE."

A seagull flew down and hovered above Snickety, pulled the marshmallows off of the stick, and then flew away with them.

"D'OH!" screamed Snickety.

Everyone around the campfire laughed, except Snickety. His ears flattened against the top of his head and he threw the stick into the fire.

After the laughter cleared, Expert looked around, and then asked, "Hey Sir, didn't ya say Lesley or something was gonna come visit us?"

Sir suddenly looked up. "Oh yes, I did! She hasn't arrived yet... I am kind of worried that something may be wrong."

Almost everyone looked up. When Sir says something's wrong, it usually is.

Mighty seemed a little uneasy.

"What's the matter, Mighty?" inquired Sir.

"I dunno, Master. I have been boggling vacantly at these shenanigans, and I think everything we have done may have been a colossal waste of time."

Sir nodded in agreement. "Well then, it is decided. I'm going to completely retell this entire story. I have noticed its many flaws, and therefore I will rewrite it with greater skill, and perhaps make it even longer than this one."

Prancing seemed confused. "Alas," he said, "This isn't a story, is it? I presumed these moments were happening right here before us, not as text on a page of screen, but as matter flowing through time."

Sir kindly responded, "Oh, you are mistaken! These events are happening right now, yes, but they are being recorded the exact same moment they happen, leading to a story of low quality. You see, the current version is merely a draft. If I rewrite it, it shall rival the works of the mighty Spearshake!"

Everyone's jaw dropped, including the seagull's, whose marshmallow promptly fell out of its mouth and landed in Snickety's hair.

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" screamed Snickety.

Some of the people in front of Snickety were pushed back by his loud scream.

"It can't be," said Jetpack. "I think he said a Word of Power... a Thu'um."

Snickety paused for a bit, then turned towards the seagull, who was now landed on the beach.

"FUS RO DAH!"

⊠ _-◖THE END◗-_ ⊠

Sir sat in his "alone chair," now renamed his "comfy chair." He was drinking a mug of tea because tea cups are too small. He had the chair positioned in front of his computer, and he was typing away at the new visioning of his adventures. "Now," he said. "This, is a work of art."

Suddenly, Mighty barged in. "How's the new story going? Is it better than the last one?"

"Sort of," said Sir. I just hope people don't end up reading the old story, and then realizing if they want to continue reading the story, they have to read it all over again as a different versi--

TEXT.ADDED.LATER.ERA (variable missing: unidentified parameters at MISSING INFORMATION)

I regret not telling Mighty what I really meant. There is no story.

I leave him alone for months at a time, maybe even years. And he doesn't mind. But does he realize what I am doing? I'm going out and doing the same thing, every single time. Trying to save them... I come home and write about my journeys and tales. He believes that each story revision is just me being a perfectionist again; that I'm changing the events to merely entertain the readers.

But that is what really happened, Mighty. The one version of the story where the Bane of Time took over the city? It wasn't just a little pessimistic, fictional story I wrote in my free time. The Bane of Time really did do that. I didn't ever add this part; but Mighty... I had to "kill" you. You know what Code 11 is...

I had to destroy the city.

And it wasn't even the first time...

I have planned this for so long, you can't even imagine. I'd never even thought I'd have to say all this...

I know you won't ever get to read this, but Mighty.... You're dead.

I'm sorry.

TEXT.END.ERA.END.END (define function: TEXT.END)

"Well," said Mighty. "At least you can fix all the cliches and make the story more interesting and also more cookies."

Sir looked at Mighty. "So you expect me to alter major plot details in the story in order to keep it from being embarrassing?"

"Yes..."

Sir seemed inspired. "Well, that be a good idier! Yarr!"

Suddenly, everyone is a pirate.

"No, no no!"

Random quoted text, is that you?

"Yes. Also, please don't screw up the new story."

I won't screw it up. The beginning will be much more catchy, and I might also improve the pictures...

"Good."

Very good.

Me three.

Bold text, your typing quirk reminds me of the way the Bane of Time communicates...

Major plot twist.

In fact, I am the Bane of Time! I have been watching you.

lol jk

That Bane of Time guy talks like...

I TALK LIKE THIS.

o.o

Ok. This version of the story is now officially over. I'm going to go work on the new one.

NO YOU AREN'T.

Yes, I am.

Goodbye.

Attempt 2,845³: failure. Log incomplete; Bane of Time (Attempt 2,845³) destroys Robbon capitol city.