C:\Omniverse

[Enzo Matrix]

Matrix opened his eyes, taking in the odd layout of the Nexus while he tried to figure out exactly what had just happened. It started simple enough, when he'd entered the Game Cube in Mainframe, like he had done so many times. Everyone was busy with other things, so he'd agreed to take this one on alone. That strange sprite had spoken to him, though, calling himself Omni. It was the most bizarre game AI he had ever seen before. As he looked around, though, it began to make sense very quickly. The answer was obvious.

There were sprites of all types loitering around. The ground and the sky looked incomplete since it was just a solid white color. The only scenery was a small fountain, but even it looked like broken code hovering about a small lake. It couldn't be any clearer.

The game was glitched.

"Great. Another second rate game that can't load properly," Matrix muttered in disgust.

A broken game meant nothing but sitting around and waiting. Eventually it would crash, and he and the residents of this sector of Mainframe would be no worse for wear. But waiting was not Matrix's strong point. His robotic eye twisted upside down as he tried to figure out what the game might have been. There were ancient looking soldiers on one end, and futuristic ones on the other end, but in the middle was a mix of just about everything he'd ever seen in a game.

He was, however, very surprised to find out that his eye was operating no where near the way it normally did. His range and sensors felt limited and dulled. That wasn't right, no game had ever affected his targeting, and that would be a very strange time for the entire thing to start malfunctioning.

He clenched a fist in annoyance, pacing over to the fountain. He looked around at the odd cast of characters loitering about, and couldn't help but notice there were no binomes. That was peculiar, as he had certainly seen a few as he entered the game's path. Not like there was anywhere to hide, either.

What felt like a brief eternity seemed to past as Matrix crossed his arms, staring down at the water. He couldn't believe this game was still active. How had the User not crashed it yet? In fact, where was the User?

Matrix suddenly started looking around, not seeing any of the behavior that typically came with a User playing any game. In fact, everyone was more or less subdued. A User would have stood out nearly immediately. Matrix squinted as he turned slowly, seeing small gates in every direction that seemed to house some sort of portal.

This whole thing was getting a little more fishy by the moment. This place had the appearance of a glitched game, but a lot of things weren't adding up.

"Game stats," Matrix commanded out loud, his eye twisting and turning as it scanned the area. One of the first things he'd done upon the system restore was have his eye upgraded with a vast database of games, allowing him to know the details without the use of a guardian Keytool.

Not in Game.

Matrix frowned as that red display appeared in his right eye. No game could ever glitch so badly that it couldn't be scanned. Something was very wrong, indeed. A sudden chill ran down his spine. It had taken him a long time to make it back to Mainframe after a game sent him to the depths of the Net. He didn't know if he could do it again, and this time alone.

He took a deep breath, calming himself. He knew he needed to figure out what this place was, if it wasn't a game, and the best way to do that was to find that "Omni" AI. He wondered where that might be, but he suddenly turned to see five sprites in solid white armor with guns approaching him. He lowered his hand so that he could fast draw Gun if necessary, but let them approach. Maybe they would have some answers.

[Enzo Matrix]

Captain White sighed as his group approached the large, green skinned man in front of them. Another new Prime. This one didn't seem as alarmed as most Primes, just confused, but that was the thing about Nexus duty. It was one of the most dangerous jobs an Imperial soldier could be assigned. New arrivals in a world they didn't understand, not to mention having to work right next to Camelot's forces and anyone else looking to travel between verses? It was a recipe for disaster, and it typically ended in exactly that.

So they carefully stopped by the man, who was already turning to look at them with some interest. The stormtrooper captain took a moment to size this individual up, noticing that his hand was hovering close to his own firearm. Captain White knew better that to make a sudden movement with his rifle, right away. Propensity for violence seemed to be a Prime prerequisite these days, and one didn't get to be a veteran stormtrooper by doing stupid things like pushing someone over the edge when they'd already had a pretty rough day. He'd seen more than one overzealous stormtrooper meet a grim end by simply not respecting that a new Prime didn't know what the hell was going on. The Empire was great and all, but the captain valued his own well being above that of the Empire. Then again, that mindset was probably what got him assigned to the Nexus in the first place. Such is life.

"New Prime, eh?" Captain White asked the man, as his four stormtroopers stood two to each side of him. "Don't look so confused."

Matrix carefully looked at each stormtrooper, studying them the best he could through their full helmets and armor, which masked any emotion. Little things would give them away, however. The one on the far right's leg was shaking, just slightly. The one on the middle left was fidgeting his arms a little, but trying to make sure he didn't raise his gun. All of them had something different in their body language that gave away their discomfort. All of them except for the leader, standing in the center, that is. He stood and spoke perfectly relaxed, as though he were simply talking to a friend on the street. Even if he hadn't been the only one to speak, it would have been obvious to Matrix that this man was the leader.

"Prime? No, I'm a Guar-" Matrix started to say, then cut himself off. Guardian wasn't exactly right, even if he was essentially doing a Guardian's job now. He surprised himself, though, he hadn't made that slip up in a long, long time. "Nevermind. What's the deal with this place?"

"You've arrived in the Omniverse," the captain explained, without missing a beat. "Don't know what the world you used to be in was like, but now you're in this one."

Matrix slowly looked around one more time, scanning the area and taking in this man's words. If what he said was true, then there were much larger problems than he had originally thought.

"This...isn't a Game?" Matrix asked, redirecting his attention back to the stormtroopers.

"Of course not!" the far right stormtrooper suddenly chimed in. "This is serious. You're here, now."

"Games are as serious as it gets," Matrix snarled to this lackey who didn't remotely understand what horrible things had happened to him because of the Games.

"Shut up, Lawson," the Captain suddenly ordered, turning to the stormtrooper for just a moment before redirecting his attention back to Matrix.

"Then what is this place?" Matrix asked.

"You probably know better than us," the captain calmly replied. "You're a Prime. Omni spoke to you. We're secondaries, which means we got brought here by Primes. We only have hearsay from the Primes to go off of. We just know he pulls Primes from all sorts of worlds and realities and places them right here in the sandbox."

Matrix shook his head, trying to take all of this in. He was removed from Mainframe...removed from AndrAIa, Dot, Bob...everyone he held dear. This was a nightmare, but there had to be a way out. He just had to find it. He looked down at the solid white ground, and it made his head hurt as he tried to focus on it. Even at point blank it was hard to tell where, exactly, the sky ended and floor began.

"This place is the Nexus. It's grand central station," Captain White explained. "Each of those gates will take you to another verse, each one with a different environment. We're stormtroopers from the Empire on Coruscant, the one back this way."

Matrix looked as the captain pointed to one of the gates in the distance. He studied it briefly, but obviously a lot of what he said had no meaning to him just yet. While Matrix was looking at it, though, the far right stormtrooper suddenly stepped forward and grabbed him by the arm.

"You need to come with us to Coruscant," the stormtrooper said as he was grabbing Matrix.

He made one attempt to move Matrix, which was completely futile. Instead, Matrix stepped back and shoved the grunt soldier with one hand, knocking the stormtrooper flat on his back. Just as he did, the startled sprite drew Gun and aimed it at the commander. The other three, their commander excluded, immediately shouldered their weapons and aimed them at Matrix. Captain White, however, didn't budge an inch.

"Goddammit, Lawson," Captain White sighed in exasperation.

"I'd call off your men," Matrix coldly said, keeping the barrel of his weapon aimed directly at his face.

"Relax, Prime," the captain said, his tone the exact same as it had been the entire conversation.

"It's not 'Prime,' it's 'Matrix'," Matrix immediately responded, his tone much more serious.

"And I'm Captain White," the commander replied. "We're going to Coruscant, now. My shift's over, and if this turns into a gun fight I'll have hours of paperwork and interviews to go through. I've got the next three days off, so the sooner I start on that the better."

Matrix lowered Gun very slowly, as the three across from him lowered their own just the same. Lawson was already stumbling to his feet, and quickly rejoined the ranks. Matrix holstered his weapon and watched as Captain White suddenly waved his left hand and turned around. As the stormtrooper captain headed towards their gate, the others quickly followed.

"Sir, we're not going to try and get him to come with us?" one of the stormtroopers asked.

"He'll come if he wants," Captain White casually answered. He was so close to taking this armor off and having a cigarette he could just taste it.

"What if he doesn't?" another interjected.

"Then he won't," the captain continued. "You gotta remember, we work in the Nexus. All that matters is getting back through the gate to Coruscant at the end of the day."

Captain White just shook his head, mentally checking off that he was just another day closer to retirement.

Matrix, meanwhile, simply watched the five of them depart. He didn't want to take his eyes off of them just yet, just to be safe. They had answered a lot of questions, but still left many more. He didn't understand this place even a little bit. It wasn't like any system he had ever seen in all of his travels, but the way that man spoke, it sounded like he wasn't even in the Net anymore. Such a concept was mind-boggling. He didn't know what to do, so he decided the best thing for now would to be to get a move on. So he paced sideways a few steps, then picked a random direction and started walking.

As he traveled across the expanse, he compared what the stormtrooper captain and this being known as Omni had said, and tried to fill in the gaps. Still, one question was bugging him so much he finally had to ask it out loud, even if no one was around.

"What in the Web is an 'hour?'"

[Enzo Matrix]

Matrix stopped walking after a little bit, putting his hands on his hips and taking a breath. He hated walking long distances so much he couldn't stand it. There had to be an easier way to get around. Omni had said something this Omnilium substance, and that anything he wanted could be his with it. Right now, some sort of transport sounded pretty good, so he closed his eyes and focused, thinking about a simple motorcycle. Although he somehow instinctively understood the summoning process with Omnilium, he still couldn't quite focus on the image of a motorcycle. He kept trying, but all that did was make him visualize his love, AndrAIa. He hated being separated from her, and that was why he had to get back. He knew how much she loved a good bike, so he instead visualized her riding the motorcycle, hoping that was a way to get around the mental block he seemed to be facing.

It took some time, so much that he nearly lost his patience and gave up, but after a little over fifteen minutes he knew the summoning process was over. He opened his eyes, annoyed by how long that had taken. What he saw, however, completely surprised him.

"AndrAIa!?" Matrix shouted in surprise.

AndrAIa stood there, obviously looking completely stunned by this new environment she was in. She looked immediately relieved at the sight of Matrix, however.

"Enzo!" AndrAIa immediately said, stepping in and putting her hand on his chest as he turned and looked out at the white nothingness. "What...what just happened? Where are we?"

"I don't know," Matrix told her, looking at her as he put a hand on her waist. "Some...thing, unlike anything I've ever seen before, brought me here. Told me this place was called the Omniverse and to look for Omnilium."

"Omni...what?" AndrAIa asked skeptically.

"I don't know, but from what I could tell, talking to a few people around here...we're not even in the Net anymore," Matrix continued.

"How is that possible?" AndrAIa looked surprised and completely dumbfounded by the mere thought of exiting the Net.

"I don't know, and I'm sorry. It's my fault you're here," Matrix continued, lowering his head a bit as he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" AndrAIa asked as Matrix let her go, and she stepped back.

"They told me that I'm a Prime, which means Omni summoned me," Matrix explained, looking slightly away as he talked. "But they said they were secondaries, which means a Prime summoned them. I must have summoned you here on accident when I was trying to form some transport."

AndrAIa shook her head. This was way too much to take in at once. In just a nano she had gone from sitting in Mainframe, doing some repairs on the Principle Office and waiting on Matrix to finish the Game he'd entered alone, and planning their night together...and now they were here in some white reality, outside the Net.

"Sorry, AndrAIa," Matrix continued. "I didn't mean to drag you into this with me. I was just trying to get out."

AndrAIa smiled and looked at Matrix. "I'd rather be in hell with you than paradise without you. I told you once, already, that Mainframe is your home, and my home is with you."

Matrix forced up a smile, though he did feel genuinely better. It was relieving that she was on board and alright, but he still hated that he'd dragged her into the unknown.

"It'll be just like the Games, only without Frisket," AndrAIa said with a smile and a wink.

"Yea. Yea, we won't bring him or anyone else unless it's necessary," Matrix said. "We've found our way back before, we'll do it again."

"So, where are we going, then?" AndrAIa asked, putting her hands on her hips and looking around.

"I was heading for that gate over there," Matrix said as he pointed in one direction. "According to the people I talked to, there's a whole new system through it."

AndrAIa squinted, barely able to make out the gate that took the shape of two palm trees leaning into each other.

"I tried summoning a motorcycle to move a little faster, but I couldn't stop thinking about being separated from you," Matrix explained.

"Then it sounds like I was coming here, regardless," AndrAIa laughed. "That's sweet, though. Really."

Matrix rolled his eyes. "Should I try again? It might take some time."

"It's not that far. Let's walk it, and see what's on the other side," AndrAIa decided, and began walking in that direction.

Matrix sighed. He couldn't stand walking, but if she was going to be moving around in those high heels, he couldn't really complain too much. He figured he'd had enough of a break anyway, so he jogged a bit to catch up with her, and the two of them walked side by side towards the nearest gate.

[Enzo Matrix]

A good while later Matrix and AndrAIa arrived at the oddly shaped gate. Matrix placed his hand on one of the two palm trees that made up the gate, running his hand up it. AndrAIa, meanwhile, leaned forwards to study the actual portal inside the gate.

"Looks like a classic portal," Matrix said, taking his hand off the tree and walking over to AndrAIa. "Nothing complicated."

AndrAIa simply nodded in response. The two of them had seen things similar to this in the hundreds...maybe thousands of games they had battled through. She was beginning to appreciate that their vast knowledge of countless environments might end up paying off here.

"What do you think?" Matrix asked after she said nothing for a minute.

"We might as well go through," AndrAIa responded. "There's all these portals, but we're at this one."

"I just walked in a direction at random," Matrix reminded her.

"Well, all this white is giving me a headache," AndrAIa said. "I mean, look at these arches. With any luck, it might be somewhere a little tropical."

Matrix laughed, knowing her all too well. After all, she came from a water based game and utilized a full set of abilities and weapons that reflected it. It was only fair that she sometimes longed to be back in a similar environment, if only for a little bit.

"Alright. If you say so," Matrix agreed, stepping closer to the portal.

AndrAIa smiled and stepped into the portal, turning and winking as she did. As she did, she stepped her final step backwards, vanishing as she entered gate. Matrix just sighed as he walked forward as well.

"Here goes nothing," the renegade mumbled as he stepped into it.

With a final step, Matrix entered the gate as well. The portal whisked him away to the same place as AndrAIa: the Vasty Deep.