I wandered the night, as close as my instincts would let me get to human areas. My destination was blazed into my head, a single word repeated over and over. Tobias.

It had been two days since I had managed to figure a way to get out of my mind (conjuring up a Stargate). I was cold, hungry, and thirsty. It was as if all my nightmares about losing my mind, vanishing off the face of the Earth, and having no one care had all come true. It was terrifyingly lonely, yet in a strange way I actually enjoyed the feeling. Sweet melancholy.

I ran across the road in front of a car, startled by the headlights. It screeched to a halt. "Blaze!" a voice called out. Tobias. I wanted to stay put, to allow myself to be rescued, but I couldn't. I sprinted into the darkness. I hated what I was doing, absolutely hated it, but there was nothing I could do. My body was, yet again, not under my control.

It was sheer luck that had me trip over something, sending me tumbling to the ground. Some kind of bird-of-prey morph dived out of the sky towards me and latched on. "If you can hear me, I'm sorry about this, Blaze," Tobias whispered in my ear as he tried to lift me off the ground. My paws flailed frantically, looking for something to fasten onto. They tried to attach to the thing I had tripped over, but were unable to get traction because it was made out of plastic. Hey, I said to myself. I've got hands. Just as expected, I returned to morph shape. In a flash I had regained control of my mind. We lifted off.

"I owe you one. How'd you find me?" Tobias bent his head down and looked at me.

"Blaze, we've been looking all over for you. What's freaky is that there's been no activity relating to your disappearance. It's like you've vanished off the face of the Earth- and the Internet. Even hacking into the communications of the local police revealed nothing. They aren't looking for you, Blaze." We landed next to his car. I leaped in through the open window and allowed my arm to be tied to the interior door handle.

"Do you know why? You'd think that there would be something." Tobias laughed bitterly.

"We're nothing to them. What's a teenager to them, Blaze? Just another person to have to keep tabs on. And the police weren't exactly big fans of Music of the Spheres in the first place. Ever since the rocket-" I winced.

"Please don't mention the rocket." He waved his hand in acknowledgement.

"In any event, they don't like us. Most of them probably have mixed feelings about your disappearance." He paused, then swore under his breath. "Dammit, Blaze. I should have been there, done something-" I cut him off.

"No. Tobias, I was out of my mind. I could have killed you if you tried to stop me. Stop beating yourself up over it. It's over and done." I flipped on the radio. An unearthly screech ripped through the interior of the car. I pinned my ears back, but the sound caused me to tear up anyway. Tobias switched the radio off.

"Blaze, we're right next to the Change doctor's office." He sounded worried. I blinked the tears away to see Tobias holding up his phone and moving it back and forth. "Some kind of radiation's interfering with the signal." A puzzled look came over his face. "Unknown type of radiation. It doesn't match up to anything in the military database either. It's some time of lepton, but I've never seen anything like it before." He turned to me. "I've pinpointed the source. I'll go get it." He returned a few minutes later with a metal orb about the size of a basketball. I recoiled away from it, then collapsed in a fit of snarling. Tobias rushed over to me, careful to avoid my claws. "Blaze!"

"Get... that... thing... out of here," I said in a gravelly rasp. I was barely able to keep a lid on my instincts, and that.. thing was causing it. Tobias tossed the orb to the side of the road and slammed on the gas.

"We're getting you to my house. Now."








Nikki stuck her arm under the bed again and tried to pull me out. In response, I snarled at her and lashed my tail furiously. When she didn't take the hint, I bit it. The arm, that is. She let out of yell of pain and pulled her arm out in a flash. "Tobias, are you sure he's safe to be around?" I responded before Tobias could.

"Safe? No, I'm not safe. Safe is overrated anyway. I don't plan on eating you, though." Nikki lied down in front of the bed facing me. More tentatively this time, she stuck her arm under the bed. I let out a low growl. In response, she scratched me behind the ears. A near-deafening purr rumbled throughout the room. I heard the doorbell ring, and a moment later Icestar walked in. I recognized him by his voice.

"Nikki, stop harassing the cat. And where's Blaze?" In response I swished my tail so that it poked out from under the bed. A moment later Icestar was lying down right next to Nikki. "Correction: Nikki, stop harassing Blaze." She gave him a dirty look, then returned to rubbing my ears. All of the sudden, I heard cut-off expletive from the direction of the computer.

"I'm going to assume that means you found something," I said.

"Actually, the files are still in the process of downloading, and I'm not looking at them until Dave's here. My Halo character just died." I attempted to glare at him and failed due to the fact that the underside of the bed was between the two of us. Just then, Dave burst in. He was dripping wet.

"Sorry, my car broke down. Now, I believe you had something to show us?"


After we all were seated (or in my case, sprawled out on top of the bed, basking in the Arizona sun), Tobias pulled up a few files- one of the sphere I had encountered, several of small pendants that looked like they belonged in a New Age store, two of DNA strands, and one of a long silver rod.


"These files were from the datapad found in the mud where I found Blaze after an irate old woman called the police about a large cat in her yard. She was freaking out about her petunias," he said, trying to smirk and failing. I cut in.


"The area smelled of humans. Adult humans." There was a general silence after my words. There, admittedly, those who were nearly human, but only about sixty were known. None of them lived in Arizona, either. "After watching Plan 9 from Outer Space a la the X-Files, I have an admittingly farfetched idea about how." Tobias tossed me the remote, and I brought up the bispin experiment of twenty years ago. "The bispin experiment is the Holy Grail of Changeology because the field produced captured the ripples that happened when three univeri collided, one of them our own." I clicked the remote again, and a cutaway of the Plague nanobot came up. "We change because of the Plague. It was chemically programmable, and the bark of that tree caused it to become benign. Now," I continued, switching back to the bispin experiment, "after a while analysis of the field showed that it was picking up more than the Change, it was picking up multiple, fainter signatures on a different frequency. A new one appeared yesterday, suggesting that something involving another universe occurred." Back to the Plague. "The Nazis didn't have the technology to make the Plague- and for that matter, no one did back then." I pulled up a very old, and very secret, document. "These reports, which were found when Tobias hacked into the Department Null database on a bet, indicate that the Plague was spread by beings from another universe, one that was trying to colonize Earth. I suppose that they must have a vaccine of sorts, which means that they could come here without fear. My hypothesis is that they returned to check on their experiment, but their equipment was damaged somehow." Nikki shrugged.


"Okay, let's go get the bastards." Dave looked like he would have a stroke.


"This is reckless. You," he said, looking at me, "go nuts every time you get near that thing. Tobias should still be adjusting to his new morphology. All of us are mere teenagers," he put emphasis on 'teenagers' "who would be going up against travelers from another universe! We should contact the police." Tobias shook his head.


"No, we shouldn't. A: I illegally borrowed my brother's car. B: We have no proof that anything illegal or worth investigating into has been done. C: Blaze's disappearance was paid utterly no attention to, which is highly unusual and makes me suspicious as to whether the police aren't in on this, at least to some degree," he explained, ticking off the different items on his list on his hand.


"I'll buy that last one." I rubbed my paw pads together.


"Then we are in agreement, unless Icestar has a problem with the plan." He shook his head. "In that case, we need to start working on a way to beat the effects of the Inducer Sphere." I brought up the file. "It seems to simply be a ball of material that emits some kind of radiation that interferes with the radio station 78.6 and causes new morphs to go nuts after a short exposure, and who knows who else after a long exposure. And since the people who made this thing are human, they wouldn't be affected." A low growling in my stomach reminded me of something else. "In addition, I haven't eaten in three days. By any chance do you have a large gazelle steak?"