File Error - Zeydaan — Story

Location: [REDACTED]

Luna Schrodinger bit her lip after concluding an experimental video conference session across dimensions. “They agreed to handle the abnormality because they mistook me for a Luna that they knew. We’re expected to do a minimal exchange of data.” She slowly drank from her coffee in hopes that the stalling would allow her time to organize her thoughts. This procedure hadn’t been psionics-tested yet, which meant that she may have just fired a high-emotion flare into the ether. Her superior silently read the diagnostics screen on the other side of the telecommunication device.

“A rift into a 1990’s California town appeared in the middle of rural Wales three hours ago.” A voice blurring male and female replied from the superior. “We aren’t sure if it is a rip in time OR if it is something worse. Even if we had the jurisdiction to act directly, we can’t risk our assets.” A ‘happy beep’ emitted from the machinery suddenly. “I’ve sent the requested information and the coordinates. The UK plays its shapeshifter assets so close to the chest that local authorities will probably accept anyone as ‘official’ if they have the right accent.” Well, at least apart from if Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton went to the distortion point. “I’m giving them the ‘public file’ on Ms. Rees to deter any potential strong-armed negotiations after job completion.” The superior reconfigured into the form of Taylor Swift. “Make sure that she remains on standby on campus.” ‘Taylor’ responded in an exact sound-alike for the replicated celebrity.

“Commander, she is our asset with the most experience across dimensions.” Luna sent a rather innocuous text to Emily that read to the effect of ‘big news! wait for me ’. “Letting the Hawkmoths perform the initial assessment saves us the risk of Emily making the rift worse on her own. She’s been talking about her Sega Saturn enough for me to dread what she might do if it is a time portal.”

“Downplay the potential time travel elements and location to keep her from improvising a Sixth Doctor ‘ugly coat’ from all of the paper products in the bathrooms… again.”

‘SCHISM EARTH’

“That wasn’t our Luna, Alvis.” An elemental dragon looked over the rather spartan mission details and the personnel file written in the style of an amusement park pamphlet. “They’re clearly probing us for a response to gauge our combat capacity.” She held up the included photo of Emily for reference. “What type of university seriously gives a professorship to someone who looks and acts in this manner? Would they make Zey/Isabella the Prime Minister?”

“Even across the countless possible dimensions, Americans are generally the same.” Alvis, an entity contained within a magitech frame, began the process of setting the coordinates from the mission request. “Bluntness makes discerning their true intent much easier, Ashley.”

“We’re seriously going to take up the job based on that?”

“I easily accessed their local network in a parallel connection due to a few universal technological factors.” Alvis brought up an assortment of video files and photos on a nearby screen. “The place isn’t even five years removed from shapeshifters and anthros openly coming out. We can’t expect miracles from a society just coming to grips with anti-matter energy sources.” The files all shifted towards focusing on the ‘origin point’ of viable anti-matter coming from an organic source. “Then again, best not to underestimate a dimension where they’ve managed to ‘pick and choose’ innovations from other timelines.”

“I’d recommend moving onto the next possible signal.” Ashley crossed her arms once the feeds showed various ‘wasted’ dragons at the hand of the Rees’s. “Just look at how they treat dragons. It’s a total disgrace!”

“I heard the portal going on and…” Zeydaan walked into the planning room right at the moment various ‘known shapeshifters’ flashed on the screen. “Pyra is dimension traveling again?” Their face lit up. “I’ll get my outfit on!” The wolf eagerly ran off towards the locker room.

“It would appear that Zey volunteered.” Alvis ran a secondary search once Zey wasn’t within earshot. “Strange, it appears that Zey has traveled to offshoots of this reality before.” Running a contact-tracing protocol brought up additional oddity: the only Hawksmoth member who Emily had ever directly contacted was a variant of Vanessa. “That’s a thread for us to tackle later on.” Zey’s triumphant return in their Akko-inspired questing outfit brought the investigation to a pause. “Zey, I will accompany you in my digital form. Call it a hunch that I sense something amiss about the target location.” Zey’s broom-themed sniper rifle left little to the imagination. “Plus, I’ll need to cast an illusion over that in a civilian space.”

Zey stuffed an orange cap over the tip of the rifle. Alvis took the precautions further through casting an illusion making the weapon resemble a skateboard deck. Shaking their head, Zey observed the specifics for the target location. A section of a retail park from the ‘Santa Rosa’ region was now situated in the Welsh countryside with a time distortion of almost thirty years. Among the various furniture and clothing stores, was a Toys R Us location. “We could make a tidy profit from the countless sealed video games there.” In truth, Zey would rather travel through time than deal with retro resellers.

“That area is the source of the distortion.” Alvis opened a white portal sized for them to enter one at a time. “If you encounter any civilians, insist that you’re a costumed character for a toyline. I’ll follow through once you synchronize to the target location.” Zey walked through the portal into what could only be considered a childish maze.

Santa Rosa Toys R’ Us – 9:45 October 17th, 1993

A tinny loudspeaker echoed throughout the warehouse-style layout of the store. Zey didn’t know what the codes meant or pay much attention because the pressing concern was the total absence of people within the store. “Is anyone here? The company sent me to draw attention to the location.” No response tempted Zey into taking more radical steps for gauging environmental hostility. They walked up to a display of Power Rangers figures that featured a ‘LIMIT ONE PER GUEST’ sign. Zey grabbed figures of the Pink and Yellow Rangers. “Here I am taking my TWO figures with me.” Grabbing a Dragonzord for the growing toy stack added to the indulgence. “Will anyone in a position of authority stop me?”

Alvis’s digital form materialized behind Zey, looking rather dismayed at Zey’s security test. “If you’re actually doing that sincerely, I’d suggest you stop hanging out with Ms. Ryder.” Zey dropped the items in a panic; activating their visor to scan for strange signals. Rogue energy originated from the video game section of the store at such frequency that a line to the exact cause formed. Alvis levitated towards a demo kiosk that featured a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive console. “The output from this item is far beyond any Motorola 68000 that I’ve ever encountered.”

Zey deactivated their visor for a clear view of the true abnormality on the unit: a glowing cartridge combination marked Sonic the Hedgehog 3. “How could they isolate a dimension into a small container?” An unearthly aura emanated from the display. “It’s giving me the creeps.”

“It could be a simulation or something else.” Alvis was more focused on the base unit as he deconstructed the display case. Bursting the offending console into suspended components didn’t show any apparent rogue magitech devices or, shudder the term, ‘alien artifacts’. Zey stuck out their hands out, took hold of the floating Sonic 3 & Knuckles cart combination and impulsively separated the two games. Instantly, the abnormal energy set off like an atomic bomb that erased everything that it touched. Alvis’s digital form ejected from the dimensional pocket thanks to a clever failsafe. “Zey?” He looked around the operations room in vain.

Ashley, holding a biscuit of coffee in one hand and a stopwatch in the other, took a long bite after stopping the timer. Zey’s enthusiasm led to enough ‘trapped’ scenarios that their colleagues placed bets on how long it would take for a ‘bad end’ to occur. “The good news is that we’ve accomplished the mission.” A video depicting the anomaly vanishing from the client dimension ran on one of the many screens in the room. “Only the area attuned to the artifact was affected in the molecular destabilization. The bad news is that search and rescue will need to occur using someone attuned to that version of Earth.”

“We’d be wildly searching for frequencies for weeks otherwise.” Alvis ran multiple simulations both within his unit and within the computer systems. They could simply swap in a Zey from another timeline OR bring on one of Zey’s preferred transformations as a replacement. However, there was no telling what might happen if Zey’s corruption was left to manifest on its own. Additionally, in a scenario where this was a deliberate trap, malicious actors could extract invaluable data from Zey’s equipment and unique DNA. The only way to rule out the client as the malicious actor was to force them to put one of their own on the line. “We need to drag Professor Rees into this matter.”

“What if she’s in on it, Alvis?” Ashley loudly objected. “She’s got so much dragon blood on her hands already!”

“Dragons were the species in positions of high power within their society for millennia.” Alvis conjured a paralyzing blast spell in the form of an energy sphere. “Her method of shapeshifting would appear to be intimate and energy-based. If she tries to attack either of us, the other will paralyze her.” Ashley produced a taser of an even high caliber from one of her outfit’s pockets. “Send a message that we need Emily to assist. Give them our coordinates as the location.”

Columbia University Anthropology Department – Faculty Lounge

“Let me get this straight.” Emily Rees reviewed the mission footage for the third time. “You sent in beings from another dimension and they blew up the problem.” Everything had happened so quickly that the local observation team didn’t have a chance to send in a period-accurate drone. “Didn’t you say that the last of these instances was over Irvine, CA during that Blizzard fan day?” She adjusted the poses on a few of her desk toys figurines. “I was actually intending to lecture today.”

“Emily, we don’t know where or when these rifts will manifest.” Luna moved push-pins on a posted world map. “In all likelihood, there have been instances beyond our range and knowledge for years. We were intending to acquire information that would help us to better isolate and understand these oddities. What’s to keep a future criminal from your kids’ timelines from showing up in a rogue nation?”

“Aren’t you the one who told me to ‘limit my movements’ because of the positive correlation between strange instances and Rees’ presence? I’ve been in the same loop of commuting to work, going on TAB standby while my T.A teaches my class and commuting back home for weeks. Now something blows up the day that I choose to actually run the Scantron machine for Periods 1 – 4.” She stood up from the desk. “I’m going out for a feigned smoke break.” Her tone went sarcastic. “I hope that a giant kaiju won’t show up in Rhode Island if I DARE to get lunch from Milano’s.” A portal opened outside of her office in perfect sync to bring Emily into the Hawkmoth’s base. By the time Emily noticed the change in location, the portal had already closed. A dragon stood behind her holding a taser aimed directly towards her spine. “Great, the dragons stole spontaneous teleportation.”

“Dragons are revered and respected across countless civilizations!” Ashley took Emily’s tone quite personally. “You clearly meddled in our affairs before and can’t plead ignorance now!” Emily transformed in the blink of an eye, managing to completely vanish from Ashley’s field of vision. “Where did she go?” Ashley turned around to discover that Emily, as Tracer, had two pulse pistols pointed towards her vital organs. “Are you taking the piss?”

“That’s enough from you two.” Alvis separated the two agitated women. “Professor Rees is clearly disoriented, but we can see that she’s the real deal.” He ran a holographic scanner over Tracer’s entire form. “If she was bluffing, that portable reactor would have exploded immediately. Why don’t you two lower your weapons?” Tracer reluctantly returned her pistols to the integrated holsters. “I ran multiple simulations to come to the conclusion that it would be best if we settled a small matter without bias from your handler ‘Luna’.”

“How do you know about Luna?” Tracer dropped the voice mid-sentence as she began to use Emily’s normal voice. “Quantum shifters are entirely on a need-to-know basis.” Ashley still held up the taser towards her. “Could you tell your dragon friend to honor her half of the verbal treaty?”

“What are you doing here, Emily?” A brunette woman wearing a distinctly early 21st Century outfit ran into the room. She hugged Tracer without warning, forming an unintentional body shield that undermined the utility of Ashley’s taser. The brunette woman expanded out into an exact copy of Mei-Ling Zhou unprovoked. “Are you making a social visit?”

“Vanessa, I was about to explain our situation to Professor Rees.” Alvis took it as a good sign that, when given a willing hostage, Emily hadn’t done anything drastic. “We are a group of interdimensional adventurers called the Hawkmoths. You may call me Alvis, you already know Vanessa and the dragon is named Ashley. We brought you into our dimension because one of our fellow agents, Zeydaan Jem, went missing on assignment in your dimension.”

Emily had vague memories tied to the peculiar name. “Zeydaan? Are they a wolf that goes by ‘Zey’ by any chance?” Alvis and Ashley acknowledged ‘yes’. “That would explain those lucid dreams involving a shapeshifting wolf.”

“Zey’s risk of generating cosmic corruption would make the portal to Hell pale in comparison.” Vanessa cut the technobabble down for the sake of communicating the pressing danger. “Zey is a dynamic shapeshifter similar to you, Em. The trouble is that they have a few quirks our team needs to properly contain. Imagine if Ripley’s plasma buildup led to a The Blob monster rather than some pudge.”

“Will you handle extraction after I recover Zey?” Emily didn’t have much choice, given the circumstances. “Will they react positively to a new face or will I need to impersonate Vanessa for the operation?”

“Zeydaan tends to gravitate towards characters that appear to exist as entertainment properties in your dimension.” Alvis took a more critical eye towards Emily’s appearance. “In the event that they’re stuck in a different form, we may want to use familiar imagery. Does the name Xenoblade Chronicles 2 mean anything to you, Professor Rees?” Emily transformed into a copy of Pyra with little hesitation. “Zey is very particular to that form.” Emily let out a slight sigh upon reconfiguring into an ‘adventurer’ version of Pandoria. “The green hair is more subtle compared to your natural color.” Alvis’ body went cold from apparent deactivation.

“He does that whenever he needs to finalized preparation.” Vanessa rested a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “In the meantime, you’ll need a codename and a weapon. We have everything ranging from clubs to blades to firearms and even plasma weapons.” A rack of fantasy weapons tailored to Emily’s tastes materialized around them. “Didn’t your Sonic OC use a Covenant energy sword for the longest time?” Vanessa pulled a potential codename from a prior interaction. “Why not take one for a ride, Pearl?”

“Last time I talked with him, Mark is now primarily using naval swords.” Emily mumbled under her breath the part about his co-workers hogging all of the katanas. She took a red mass from the racks that she began manipulating in the manner of a Swiss army knife. Pulling the device one way deployed a scythe while activating it another way transformed it into a sniper rifle. “I need to have the option to pick off targets from any distance.” She adjusted her appearance to add a red cloak matching the weapon. “It doesn’t feel right going by Pearl if I’m not planning to rap or do something regrettable.”

“Ruby it is.” The racks recontextualized into a portal only a few feet away from Vanessa. “Em, do you still carry that contingency item on you?” A small metal heart locket levitated within the blade core on Emily’s exposed chest. “If the worst happens, I’ll make sure that gets to your timeline. Apart from that, good luck.”

Earlier in the Portal

Zey awoke on a pile of discarded t-shirts inside of a dumpster. Curious, they picked up one of the shirts to gather environmental information. The iconography showed a minimalist girl with pigtails and the phrase ‘Rapid 99’. “Rapid 99? What does that mean?” Zey’s question brought the attention of a punk girl towards the dumpster. “Do you speak English?” The girl groaned before tossing more shirts onto Zey. “Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong?”

“Yeesh, you sound like a Noise Tanks reject.” The punk girl lit a cigarette. “Ain’t got much to say other than ya might wanna get out of the fire pit.” She took a long drag on the cigarette while Zey crawled out from the dumpster. The wolf certainly didn’t resemble a local in the slightest. “You from Altered Beast or Shining Force?”

“Neither, actually.” Zey quickly realized that the punk girl was none other than a variant of their sporadic alter ego/flop buddy Grey Ryder or at least close to her. “Where exactly in here, Grey?”

Grey was taken aback that the outsider knew her name. “How’d you know my bloody name? It was that blabbermouth Meghan, wasn’t it? Damn blabbermouth; glad we kicked her to the Moose Militia.” She tossed the cigarette into the dumpster nonchalantly. “I don’t give a shit where you go in Mega-Drive City if you don’t snitch to the Virtua Cops.” Her attention shifted towards finishing touches on a tag calling the area for the ‘Brit Twits’.

“Virtua Cops? Moose Militia?” Zey’s enhanced hearing caught the sound of a siren starting up beyond the range most humans could hear. “There’s a car coming fast from the northwest.”

“Yeah and I’m an Eternal Champion…” The siren reaching human auditory thresholds sent Grey into enough of a panic that she tossed the spray can into Zey’s hands. “Here! Catch!” She fired up her kinetic skates faster than Zey could process what had unfolded. The cops were eager to pin the blame for the recent graffiti war on someone and Grey had found the perfect fall-wolf.

Zey dropped the paint can instinctively, which triggered the contents to burst out from the can. Local authorities surrounded the alley from all sides. “Wait! There’s been a misunderstanding!” What type of city sends out helicopters and mechanized officers for a case of vandalism? A detective wearing a trenchcoat aimed a revolver towards Zey. “Aren’t you going to run fingerprints or check video cameras?” Zey pointed towards a security camera that resembled a late 90’s webcam. “That’s my witness.”

The detective shot at the camera without hesitation. “We’re immune to your magical malarkey in this city, whatever your name is.” One of his many lackey officers positioned a projector on the top of a squad car. CCTV footage showed Grey assisting Zey out from the dumpster. “You were seen interacting with Earl Grey and your voice fits those UK Invasion types. If the shoe fits…” He primed the hammer on the revolver. “You shoot it!” An exaggerated bullet flew past Zey’s head.

A major crash in the distance bought Zey time to make a desperate move. Zey pushed the dumpster towards the cops, spotted a manhole cover and ducked down into the sewer. Sewer levels always suck, yet stealth missions in jails are always worse. An entire underground civilization bustled in the pipes almost like its own Hydro City Zone. Technically, the proper name is Hydrocity Zone because Zey was moving through the area at such a high velocity that the exact details were a blur.

Back to the Present

Emily landed in the middle of a production located in a grand theater. The audience and actresses all stared at her thinking this was part of the show. “It was Earth all along! You maniacs! You blew it up!” She feigned confusion in an attempt to contextualize the play.

“Oh, that’s my secret sister who I never mentioned before!” An actress with glasses and grey-white hair stood in front of Emily. “She’s suffering from the after effects of the war. Let’s all have a moment of silence!” She pushed Emily behind a piece of scenery. “What do you think you’re doing out there?” Her right hand conjured a menacing fireball. “It’s bad enough that Erica keeps falling down during this production. I’m not about to let some…” The woman took a good look at Emily. “Say, you could be a useful decoy for me.” She regained her composure for the stage. “How about we talk after the show, cutie?” Without losing a beat, she transitioned from the scolding to singing ‘The Heat is On in Saigon’.

“Now I know how it feels when I impose on people.” Emily couldn’t believe her luck in surviving an encounter with an agitated Lobelia Carlini. There was no mistaking that a slice of the Sakura Wars series was unfolding around her. “I don’t know if this is a Sega dimension or if I’ve unconsciously tinted the reality.” Regardless of the answer, she had to sneak out of the theater quickly before becoming too entangled. Slipping out through a side door brought her out onto the street across from an electronic billboard. Advertisements for Space Channel 5, Dynamite Headdy and Bug! Programs switched over to a ‘WANTED’ announcement featuring a wolf dressed in the style of Atsuko Kagari. “That leaves the matter of trying to blend in with the locals.” Emily snapped her fingers to find that something was keeping her from transforming. “There’s probably some type of tamper-proof mechanism in play.”

“Psst, you want to go to any level, jump higher and live forever?” A seedy looking man in a trench coat approached Emily. “I got the goods from the docks.” He flipped open his coat to showcase boxed Game Genies and Action Replays. “How many can I put you down for?” His whole body radiated early attempts at photorealism held back by limitations of the era. “There’s a lot of fake stuff circulating around these days, but I only stock the real thing.”

Docks? The presence of docks suggested that there were sailors in the area. Any Sega fan knows that where there are sailors, there’s plot-progressing trouble. “Do you know of any places where sailors hang out?” Emily did her best to emulate the stilted Shenmue line delivery.

“Sailors? They’re not around here.” The man’s animation cycle reset. “Between us, I got a very rare pair of jeans.” He proudly modeled the flat-shaded pants. “I got these at the BLAST PROCESSING Bar that lets data flow. Seems pretty intense for a schoolgirl like you, though.”

Unbeknownst to Emily, Zey’s trip through the sewer concluded in a runoff area simply marked ‘Hedgehog’s Peril Zone’. The surrounding undercity reeked of desperation from when you begged your parents for more coins at an arcade. Not wanting to attract too much attention, Zey steered clear of the marketplace and took refuge on a dock where an unattended fishing rod sat. Not wanting to risk further ‘heat’, Zey intended to use the fishing rod for reference to transform their rifle into a similar form. Unfortunately, Zey soon discovered that their transformation abilities were locked off. “I shouldn’t have smoked yesterday.” If Zey ‘borrowed’ the rod and used it in the exact place, what was the worst that could happen, right?

On closer inspection, the fishing rod was a Dreamcast fishing controller crudely modified into a functional fishing rod. Zey shrugged their shoulders before attempting an initial cast. The controller wire line landed in the middle of a glowing circle of water. An unseen narrator screamed ‘GET’ at the moment something bit the hook. Zey wound the reel in a deliberate manner for maximum control. What waited for them at the end of the line was rather unexpected. A fish with a human face stared at Zey, glanced at an electronic billboard showing the wanted message and looked back at the wolf. “In general, would you consider yourself a confident… wolf?”

“Generally, yes.” Zey sensed that the fish wanted to create a commotion. If it was smart enough to hold a conversation, then it probably comprehended the notion of money. There were a lot of zeros on the wanted billboard. “What’s your name, fish?”

“It’s Seaman.” The fish contemplated the implications of the name. “You strike me as the type of creature who is above such broad titles. Tell me, are you in touch with your female side or am I mistaken?” A large figure moved into position behind Zey. “All sentient beings I know love cats.” A big purple anthropomorphic cat nearly double Zey’s size restrained Zey. “Take the prize to the holding tank, Big.”

“You got it, Froggy!” Big the Cat tossed Zey over his shoulder before taking hold of the rod in a free hand. “We’ll show the Bonanza and Floigan Bros. who can win the scavenger hunt!” Big carried Zey into the back entrance of a building marked ‘BLAST PROCESSING’.

At the front of the bar, Emily stood out more than a Virtua Racing cartridge. Most of the patrons were either ‘henchmen’ sprites, ­­Rise of the Robots characters or, worst of all, the barrels from Sonic 3. An aged bartender wearing an eyepatch slid a glass of milk towards her. “Here ya go! Milk’s perfect for a schoolgirl, I’d say!” The bartender laughed in a bizarre manner.

Emily spotted a group of Streets of Rage 3 henchmen in the color scheme from the dock area. “Are those guys sailors?” She didn’t even acknowledge the milk. “I’m looking for sailors who might be harboring the big bounty.” Wordplay on that level helped pass for localization. She noticed Yellow Signal move into a position for attack.

“What are you? Some type of Game Gear TV adapter detective?” Yellow Signal placed a hand on Emily’s right shoulder. Emily shrugged off the gesture. “You little punk! You looking for some of this!” Yellow Signal’s punch was intercepted; Emily tossed the goon into the back of the bar serving area.

“You stupid!” One of the Bonanza Brothers rushed towards Emily. A swift mule kick back slammed the blobby villain into a table. Moigle stood up from a bar stool, picked up a pipe and swung wildly towards Emily. Moigle’s frenzy drove Emily into a retreat that sent her deeper into the depths of the seat area. Luckily, the riddle of the barrels stalled the brute long enough for Emily to shoot the pipe out of his hand and knock his hat off. Moigle’s panic from losing his hat sent the remaining patrons into total chaos.

“That’s enough!” The bartender rotated the entire seat area by 90 degrees to dump the aggressive patrons into a ‘cool down’ tank. Emily staked the scythe into the ground for a temporary anchor. Once the drowning music stopped for those in the pool, the bartender returned the room to its proper position. “You put on quite the show, girl.” The bartender sneered. “Not many bounty hunters survive the Special Stage treatment. I’ll tell you what you want if you never show your face here ever again.”

“It’s a deal.” Emily grabbed a few discarded rings from a table as insurance. “I want to know where the wolf is being held.” The bartender pressed a button under the bar that moved a Virtua Fighter cabinet aside; revealing a hidden passage. “Thanks.” This section of the building was firmly rooted in dungeon crawling territory.

“What’s that sound?” Seaman, now safely in a fish tank, heard quite the commotion coming from within the walls. “Is someone playing with GEMS in the secret level again? That’s the fifth time this month.” A goon flung through a brick wall. “Big! Attack the intruder!” Multiple thrown goons immobilized the large cat. “Who do you think you are?”

“Behold the mighty Pandoria!” Emily struck a dramatic pose that emphasized the mirroring of her glasses. “Living embodiment of a storm!” She transformed her weapon from ranged mode to scythe mode in full view of Seaman. “And this is my weapon, the CRESCENT ROSE APOCALYPSE LIGHTNING RAGE!” She pointed towards the rope-bound Zey in the back of the small room. “Pyra, I’m getting you out of here!”

Zey’s ears perked up from Pandoria’s bombastic entrance. None of the other Hawkmoths were quite this blunt during rescue operations. ‘Pandy’ only had to stick her hand into the fish tank for the electricity discharge to defeat Seaman. She carefully used the edge of the scythe blade to cut Zey free. Zey sniffed her for the telltale signs from most of their peers. Most non-anthro shapeshifters fail to take masking their scent into question, but no anthro was in a rush to give away the secret. “I can’t say that we’ve been properly introduced, miss?”

“I’m Emily Rees or just Em for short.” Emily was taken aback that Zey didn’t seem impressed at the name drop. “I’m from the dimension that this anomaly is adjacent to. I’d show you one of my transformations if I wasn’t locked to this form. What I'd give to become Lightning about now."

“I had brunch with her a few days ago.” Zey stretched slightly. “It's one thing for me to not have my power, but it feels as if everyone here is slightly faster than me. I can’t believe that a fish tricked me!”

Emily raised an eyebrow at Zey's comments. Unlike her, Zey seemed to see the video games as distinct worlds rather than simulations. “I’d imagine that you’re stuck at PAL speeds in a NTSC domain.” Emily compared the ‘blurry’ composite edges of her model to Zey’s sharper SCART lines. “You running at nearly a 17% speed deficiency is a problem.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem, Em. Simply open a direct line with Alvis and we can teleport out of here.” Zey breathed a sigh of relief at the start of a remote warp invocation. Soon enough, the spell corrupted and ejected the two across the room. “That’s never happened before.” Binary code formed on the ceiling that translated into a REGION LOCK error code. Zey kicked a brown block marked with a large ‘P’. The block ejected a wig resembling a 16-bit rendition of Pyra’s hair. “What is that doing here? Did we find Tora's secret stash?"

“Why didn’t I think of the power-ups from Kid Chameleon sooner?” Emily nudged against another brown block for a power up resembling a crystallized lightning bolt. She embraced the item and rapidly transformed into Claire ‘Lightning’ Farron from Final Fantasy XIII. “We’ve only just met Zey, but this is my 'big gun'.” She reconfigured her weapon into the Blazefire saber gunblade. “I hope the cape is close enough to fit your group’s aesthetic.”

“Kid Chameleon? Never heard of them, but I can't argue with results.” Zey placed the Pyra wig on their head. Flames flew in all directions symbolizing a phoenix undergoing rebirth. Androgynous zones burst into undeniably feminine proportions and features. ‘Zeyra’ took the accursed fishing rod and allowed the flames to reforge it into a proper version of the Aegis Sword. “I’m the blazing sword who carves her own destiny! Pyra!” Red and pink pyrotechnics exploded behind the transformed duo.

“I wasn’t expecting the Power Rangers team-up effect.” Emily cast the buff move ‘haste’ onto Pyra. “That should negate the speed penalty for now. Do you prefer to be treated as the character or are you more of an ‘enhanced cosplay’ type?”

Pyra stared Lightning down for even making the suggestion. “Pyra is a close friend and I will do my best to live up to her name.” She kicked down the door to the outside. “We’re going to fight our way out. I hope that you’re one hundred percent in this and not…” The outside world now more closely resembled a hybrid of Metallic Madness Zone and a space elevator than it did the slums from earlier. “playing pretend…” Pyra’s voice trailed off from seeing the multitude of Faced Mechon derivatives in the distance. “That’s a lot of formidable foes.”

“Let me take a look.” Lightning shoved her way past in time to observe a Recognizer drop off cyber-demons in steampunk mecha. “The world is reacting to our subconscious notions of what opposition should resemble. We could use that to our advantage because Sakura Wars units don’t actually level up.”

“I’ve helped achieve the best possible resolutions in all of the Xenoblade dimensions, Lightning.” Pyra’s confident brag shifted towards despair. “Probably best for me to not make the odds worse for us, right?”

“Way ahead of you.” Lightning fired at a Buzz Bomber that was about to report their location. “What are we looking for as a HARD ejection mechanism? Magic was how I got out of the last strange dimension I was stuck in.”

“Hard ejection would require us to access whatever is probing our minds for ideas. If we can find the source, we could brute force a reset.” Zey mostly pieced together word salad from what Alvis blabbed in the field. “There are riskier options that involve becoming pure energy.”

“We could try cartridge tilting or contact my friend Static the Hedgehog.” Lightning sensed Pyra's confusion intensfiy. “Ok, many of the dimensions you've traveled to exist as video games in my dimension. When I was younger, I made a few OCs based on what I was into...” Hordes of Swat-Bots descended on our heroines. Lightning slashed one robot in half vertically to make an opening for her and Pyra to advance. Indiscriminate laser fire from the robots managed to primarily friendly fire their own allies. Whether that was due to poor design or an aftereffect from Lightning’s electromagnetic frequency or Pyra’s intense heat didn’t matter. Fighting through the dock area devolved into Lightning and Pyra chucking every robot they could into the toxic bay waters. A mechanical sea serpent leapt into the air grabbing the latest Swat-Bot offering. Lightning, taken aback, did a double take. “Is that the water hazard from Sonic Spinball?”

“You’re the expert on 'video games', Lightning.” Pyra cleaved through a roboticized Bubsy Bobcat. "It's hard for me to imagine that all of this is simply a game."

“Roboticization was never in the mainline Sonic games except…” Lightning pondered the disembodied head of robo-Bubsy. “Pyra, this isn’t going to work. We need to shift paradigms now.” Lightning attacked the ground until an opening formed. “It’s time for very literal sequence breaking.” She dragged Pyra down into the panel below depicting the inside of a safehouse.

“How did you do that?” Pyra leaned out from the panel trying to process all that was unfolding around her. Something told her subconsciously that a ‘heart-to-heart’ was necessary for progress in the main questline. “Why don’t you continue that story from before the ambush?”

"I got the idea from a game called Comix Zone that I never beat, yet loved the premise." Lightning took a peek at the blank abyss beneath their temporary haven. "I'll try to keep this sensical because, for all I know, you're friends with most of the Sonic the Hedgehog characters.” She turned her back to Pyra out of embarrassment. "After Sonic Heroes came out, everyone wanted to make their own little teams for their original characters. I decided to one up the trend through making an ENTIRE league of character because it sounded cool and stood out. We wanted the 'actually dangerous' Robotnik era of Sonic as opposed to the sanitized version.”

Pyra thought over the implications.“Your character was a kistune with multiple tails, right?”

Lightning nodded. “Yes, how did you guess?”

“Call it a hunch.” Pyra didn't mention that Lightning’s shadow appeared as a blacked out Tails’ sprite. “You and this league fought this Robotnik character, correct? I’ve heard far worse than that. What are you not telling me?”

“We had insane levels of power creep over time that got to a point where everything had to border on doomsday risk. My fear is that an unseen entity will escalate our opposition because of my 'ambitious' tendencies.”

Pyra could sense Lightning's discomfort and decided to change the subject. “What was that you were saying about roboticization earlier? I recall hearing about that in a hybrid cartoon and comic dimension.”

“There was a game called Sonic Spinball that was rushed out in 1993 when it was clear that Sonic 3 wouldn't meet the holiday release window. It was the only title to reference the concept directly.”

“It sounds like the copy of Sonic 3 that sent me here was actually Sonic Spinball with an incorrect label.”

“That’s it!” Lightning snapped her fingers, accidentally casting Thunder in her excitement. “I know exactly what we need to do and how we can fix your format problem.” She put down her weapon. “I need you to hit me as hard as you can, Pyra.” Pyra unleashed a Blazing End attack that flung Lightning against the wall. Emily slid down the wall, reverted to her original as the rings scattered. “Let’s see if my hypothesis is correct.” Emily closed her eyes to enter a state of advanced concentration. Blue energy enveloped her while an unseen chorus sang the ‘SEGA’ chant. “WELCOME TO THE NEXT LEVEL…” Her voice now perfectly paralleled Kath Soucie’s sultry voice. She emerged from the light transformed into Princess Sally Acorn. “We are able to transform on our own if we work within the parameters of the game.”

“Strange, Sally never told me that she was in this type of dimension.” Pyra inspected Sally for any glaring issues because splicing dimensional elements always invited risk. Coloring was a bit flat and the vest detail was sparse, yet limitations of DiC animation couldn’t be ignored for accuracy. “You appear to be stable in this environment.” Pyra noted an unoccupied external strap on Sally’s left boot. “You are missing Nicole, Sally.”

“The game considers Nicole to be a different character.” Sally tried in vain to transform Lightning’s sword into the PDA. “See? No luck. We’d need a digitized intelligence for that to work.”

“Aren’t NTSC and PAL analogue formats, Sally?” Pyra coyly hinted towards the solution. “If I become digital, my crew could easily extract us.”

“It’s worth a try.” Sally reconfigured the weapon into a multi-region cartridge converter. Pirating something meant for piracy didn’t cause a game logic crash. “Are you sure that you want this, Nicole?” Pyra reverted back into Zey without the need for a dramatic impact. “How did you do that?”

“The game is already helping me to divide myself.” Zey noticed how much smaller Sally was compared to Emily. “Much like Pyra, my essence can be tied to a core." The wolf leaned over while offering the Aegis Blade to Sally. "Make a digital core from this while I craft a holographic body because there's no telling how or what I may need to interface with.”

Sally slammed the cartridge converter into the malleable blade. Visualizing the offspring of a Palm Pilot and a classic Gameboy willed Nicole’s physical chassis into existence. A notification on the LED display indicated no installed OS. "No, I'm going to use my powers how they were always meant to work!" Sally aimed the computer towards Zey. "“Let’s do it to it, Nicole!” All non-essential processes in the surrounding area came to a stop because the dimension was still limited to finite computing limits.

Walls of assembly code formed a rudimentary cube shape around Zey. Despite the tech demo-esque imagery from the axis markers, the wolf retained movement for now. Zey’s outfit simplified into a group of flat-textured quads-based materials featuring apparent dithering arranged in place of the original clothing. Curious, Zey found a series of equations unnervingly pouring down the blocky collar of the shirt onto their chest. A slight tingling sensation dulled physical discomfort enough to mask a general decay in the feeling of touch. Zey’s fingers phased through the inspected part of the shirt. “I’m undergoing some form of conversion at least.” Suddenly, Zey’s hat plummeted through their body down to the floor below.

A loading bar manifested within Zey’s field of vision that read ‘COMPRESSION IN PROGRESS’. All at once, most of Zey’s remaining outfit pieces dropped to the floor as the wolf reduced in height by over half a meter. Mobian proportions always took a few minutes to account for because of the head and hands retaining the larger proportions. Zey’s shirt hung loose and large in the vein of a young child playing dress up in their parents’ clothing. Progress on the loading bar prompted the shirt collar to resize into a strapless top left floating in the chest area. Zey’s waist compressed inward as it molded to the forming dress shape. Whatever was subtracted from that area redistributed into the ‘Bins of Ordinary Binary Storage’ on the upper body. Gathered data suggested that ‘BOOBS’ would increase the experience for most users. The ‘bins’ settled at a size that still fit within the dress chassis. Zey’s exploratory activation of the new assets on their chest began a self-diagnostic scan.

“Multiple users are sharing this vessel. There is corrupt data in multiple sectors.” Zey had little option to explain the errors to the budding program. “Administrator User suggestion of ‘lynx’ has been accepted.” Splotches of brown fur erupted across Zey’s arms, overtaking all of the grey fur that they touched. Zey’s already shaggy hair grew out further past their shoulder blades with the option to extend on whim. Genesis on-screen color limitations disintegrated the mauve accent color from the HIGHER VOLUME hair. Whatever data lingered from the hair dye reformatted into tufts of black hair atop the significantly taller lynx ears.

Cracking within Zey’s muzzle brought the general structure of their face into uncanny territory. Eyes doubled in size, the nose shrank and eyelash details for each eyelid exaggerated into unmistakable femininity. A wave of brown coloring overwhelmed the grey fur in a matter of a few blinks. Rounding and generally ‘cute’ features made Zey unrecognizable. Black fur marks formed underneath the eyes for the distinct look of a stylized lynx. Progress on the bar neared the 50% mark. “I’ll need a means of interfacing.” A voice intermittently splicing Zey and Nicole’s voice remarked. “Data without the ability to connect is forever isolated.” Zey’s pupils became a piercing shade of green.

Data wrapped around Zey’s fingerless gloves since Nicole would need precise manipulators along her fingers. The back parts of the gloves retained the black from the source article of clothing while the bottoms became a stark shade of white. Fabric covered fingers that only needed to slightly slenderize for fitting the general shape of a Mobian female. What did diminish significantly was Zey’s wolf tail: it shrank down to a miniscule shadow of its former glory. Purple cuffs gave the gloves a fresh finishing touch that distinguished from the ‘stock cartoon gloves’ many were stuck wearing.

Data repurposed the discarded clothing into form-fitting black leggings that covered Zey’s lower body. Defragmenting the region rounded off the features at the expense of any lingering masculinity. An upside to this data optimization was accentuating the rear end. Sally’s input suggested that making this part of the body large might prove advantageous. Was it like an increased cache or extra memory? In this moment of confusion, the data defaulted a major portion of the remaining material into white fabric that flowed from the bottom of the strapless top. What ensued was half cloak fringe and half skirt blended into the rest of the outfit. Completing the Mobian look was a pair of black and white ‘vaguely athletic’ shoes. It was only after the soles formed that the lynx noticed she had been floating the whole time.

“I look the part…” The lynx inspected her gloved hands before noting that the progress on the loading bar remained incomplete. A purple collar wrapped around her throat that attached itself to the top with a circular purple brooch. Matching purple circles formed on her gloves and the façade of socks on her shoes. “Nodes?” The odd word perfectly described what remained missing from her system. She needed power beyond Zey’s nervous system if she wanted to access her true power. Time unfroze without the progress bar vanishing from view. “Sally, I require additional power for full digitization. My nodes must connect to the main console if we wish to exit.”

“I could have sworn that I put in enough of my energy for the complete transformation.” Sally took hold of a Power Ring from her small stockpile. “I only need one of these for security, anyway.” Nicole held aloft the Power Ring waiting for something to happen. “Try to do what you think Sonic might do or worse.” Sally picked up the skateboard from the debris of Zey’s clothing. “That’s why you brought this with you, right?”

“Alvis is usually several steps ahead of me.” Nicole took the skateboard in her free hand. By all accounts, attempting a high-speed launch on a mass-production skateboard was self-destructive. What if there was interference or something in the way? “1 or 0… There is no try in digital.” If she wanted to get the data through, she would need to find a way. Nicole dropped the deck to the ground, mounted and held the ring forward towards the far end of the safehouse. She knew that the next part of the story was there and her actions determined their fates. “1!” Nicole burned rubber so intensely that flames remained in her wake.

Blazing through Mega-Drive City bombarded Nicole’s databases with so much data. The harder and faster she pushed the ring, the more data integrated into her. An aura of purple data formed around her hands and feet. Spying a sign marked ‘Past’, Nicole juiced the rest of the ring energy for a final burst. Momentum alone sent Nicole through a green portal to a location unknown. Whatever doubts remained in her changed from 0’s to 1’s as the progress bar completed. If RISC-ing it all came with the chance of destruction, so be it.

Nicole landed in the 90’s toy store video game section that started the entire pandemonium. She cautiously approached the Sega Genesis kiosk wondering how she could prevent her past self from becoming entrenched within. Would she even remember this adventure if she unplugged the console now in the timeline? Breaking open the maintenance of the unit brought Nicole face-to-face with the true culprit. Nicole pulled out a sealed SNES depicting a time-warped demake game. “Who would hide an SNES version of Xenoblade Chronicles in a Mega Drive display unit? Apart from me, I mean.” Collapsing the anomaly triggered the Hawkmoths’ data recovery contingency. Nicole blacked out not knowing if the digital conversion worked this time.

“She’s waking up.” Emily cheered towards unseen guests. “I didn’t expect you to speed past warp sonic.”

“I did what?” Nicole found herself on a cot in the home base’s infirmary. “What happened to that other Xenoblade dimension? I was wanting to see what happens there.”

“It doesn’t matter and it’s wrapped up. Focus on rest for now.”

“The Incident Report is rather… unique.” Alvis connected to Nicole in a peer-to-peer data exchange. "I’ve seen to it that Professor Rees got the data her superiors wanted without needing the inciting incident to occur.”

“I know a few groups that will launder the information enough to not expose your location. If it isn’t a problem, I’m going to head back for my lecture this morning." A portal formed in front of Emily. "See you around, Nicole."

The End?