Byte's POV:

"Well, Rose. The system restore is done," I yawn about thirty hours and fifteen cups of coffee after we started. Several hours ago, Giga went to charge because her batteries were dying. I haven't seen Mega since me and Rose holed up here in my workroom.

I'm met by a snore, and then a "I'm up Thdwee, I'm up. What is it?"

Chuckling tiredly, I close the laptop and set it down on the coffee table, then turn to her. "I said, the system restore is finally done. Takes a while to restore a whole Galaxy, after all."

"But how do we know if it worked?" she frowns, then yawns again.

Frowning, I turn back to the computer. "I guess we could bring someone else out, but it needs to be someone who can be safely stuck out here. Who would you suggest?"

"Well, I don't know. Thdwee, maybe?" she shrugs, then nods. "Yeah, if I'm stuck here, I want Thdwee out here with me."

"All right," I sigh, opening back up the laptop and pulling up Nintendo World's system files. But before I can search for Thdwee, several error messages pop up. "What the-?" I gasp as I scroll through them. "This says that pretty much all of the heroes have been... deleted. And it still says 'crash in progress,' so apparently the system restore didn't work. Welp, that was a day and a quarter wasted."

Growing distraught, Rose gasps, "Deleted?!? They can't be deleted! No! I forbid it!"

Smiling weakly, (one of those smile or cry moments, y'know?) I say, "Sorry, Rose, but the computer doesn't just take orders from princesses." All of my favorite heroes... the real, true, living forms of them... gone. I don't want to believe it. I won't believe it.

"What did they do? Go to the edge of the Galaxy and jump in?!?" she moans, hiding her face in her hands. "What do we do, Byte?"

"Well, first we get Thdwee out," I mutter, then delete and copy-paste his file into the real world from this end. A moment later, a confused-looking Thdwee appears on the desk next to the box, rubbing his head. Poor little guy's got a headache, just like Rose did.

"Hey, Thdwee," Rose smiles at him, and he eagerly holds out his little paws to be picked up, then hides his face in her neck and falls asleep.

"He's just as much of a sweetie as ever," I giggle, then grow serious again. "I wish there was some way to contact the ones still inside," I murmur, then snap my fingers. "Let's see if this thing is anything like a normal video game console."

"What do you mean?" she asks with a frown as she runs her free hand through her hair in distress.

Grinning, I grab the box in one hand and her arm in the other. "C'mon, Rose. To my game room!" I lead her down the stairs and into the living room, where I keep a cabinet full of old consoles and games. Carefully, I unplug the shiny new Wii that's currently plugged into the TV and replace it with Nintendo World, which I then plug a Classic Controller into.

"I hope this works..." I murmur, then switch on the TV. For a moment, there's just static, but then a pixelated, starry-yellow, star-shaped planet appears on the screen. Grinning even bigger, I move the onscreen pointer to the island in the center and press 'start.' It zooms up, showing a city with a bunch of pixelated creatures walking around. Quickly, I select the castle, then turn to Rose. "What room should I go to?"

"Castle library," she murmurs, looking kind of sad. I guess I don't blame her, I just made her whole world appear on a TV set. If that doesn't make you feel pointless and tiny, I don't know what would.

With a nod, I select that room. Inside is a (also pixelated) Magolor, Sir Arthur, Rinda, Geek Toad, Shadow Kirby, and a cat Star Warrior that I don't recognize. Dialogue boxes keep popping up beside their heads as they speak.

They're all currently discussing what they should do now that all the heroes are gone. So we're not the only ones who have noticed, apparently. Mostly, they're trying to get the cat Star Warrior to tell them how to bring the heroes back, and she says she doesn't even know where they went and that they need to lay off.

"Poor kitty, they're acting like interrogators," I mutter, feeling sorry for her.

Rolling her eyes, Rose snorts, "I don't blame them. Dark Sakura is a brat."

Giving her a questioning glance, I say, "Who's she? I've never heard of that character."

"You wouldn't have. She's the dark side of a character the system came up with on its own at some point," she explains. "Anyway, Dark Sakura's a bad character, no pun intended. Now, Byte. I've got a question for you."

Turning back to the screen, I murmur, "This is kind of like a webcam. Cool. Question is, how do we talk to them?" Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I tell Rose, "Okay, shoot."

Looking over at me thoughtfully, she says, "There are several realities, and each one goes differently. If there's only one Galaxy inside the console, how are there multiple realities?"

"Um," I reply, completely and totally lost. "I didn't know there even were multiple realities. I have no idea how that works."

Frowning, she points out, "But you're the Ancient. Don't you know everything about our world?"

Covering my tracks, I laugh nervously, "I'm an Ancient, yeah, but I'm not one of the Ancients that built the box."

"Oh, okay," she shrugs. Phew. Disaster averted, for now, anyway. I'm not looking forward to when she realizes I'm not all-powerful and that I'm about as helpless as she is at the moment. "Let's get some rest and figure out how to talk to them later. Hopefully we have enough time for that."

Yawning in reply to Rose, I then call out into the house, "Mega!"

About all of five minutes later, he comes drifting lazily in. "Yeah, Byte? What do you want? I was trying to charge," he sighs morosely.

Laughing weakly, I order him, "Keep an eye on this and tell us if anything major happens. I'm going to bed. Coffee is no substitute for sleep. C'mon, Rose, you can have the guest room."

I'm met by another snore. With a smile, I grab a blanket off of the back of a chair and throw it over her, then flip the lights off and head upstairs.

We're running out of time, and I'm just about out of ideas. This is just brilliant.

***************************************************************************

Meta Knight's POV:

Well, I have figured something out in the past few minutes: This not quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever done, this is actually definitely the stupidest thing I have ever done.

Kirby, Bandana Dee, and I are all holding on for dear life to the smooth metal roof wherever we can get a grip. Sakura, however, is doing foolish things like jumping up and letting several cars fly out from under her before landing, or doing Ninja flips from car to car, screaming with laughter the whole time. Has she gone insane in the time she has been here?

The one thing I am happy with her about is that right after we got on the train, she took the scarf off and pushed it into the satchel she carries with her, so at least we can see her facial expressions again.

Suddenly, she spreads her wings out sideways and uses the air resistance to zoom back to where we are, close to the back of the train. "Kirby! Come on, stand up! I'll help you! It's just like riding a Warp Star!" she hollers at him over the roar of the train, a huge grin on her face.

Cautiously, he allows her to help him up, then stands there for a second, frozen with fear. But after a moment, he starts to squeal with laughter just like she is doing, although he is not crazy enough to do idiotic 'tricks' -yet.

"Do you want to try, Bandana?" she shouts at the Waddle Dee among us. Looking at her like she is insane, (which I am beginning to wonder if she actually is,) he shakes his head at her fiercely.

Still laughing, she turns to me. "C'mon, Meta Knight. You used to love Warp Stars. It's no faster than one of those!"

Clutching even tighter to the train, I glare at her and yell back, "Maybe it is not any faster, but it is a lot louder, and falling off leads to serious injury and/or death, unlike any Warp Star!"

"Eh, you're just scared," she laughs at me while I give her a disgusted look, then resumes her crazy stunts for a few minutes. But it is not long before she comes back, an urgent look on her face.

"Tunnel!" she shouts.

Frowning, I call back, "What?"

"Tunnel!" she yells again, this time like an order, quickly pushing Kirby and Bandana Dee gently down onto their faces. "Stay there until I say you can move," she commands them, then holds her wings out and zooms back to where I am a car or two back.

"What does 'tunnel' mean in this context?" I question.

Rolling her eyes, she replies as she takes the same position she put the children into, "It means get your face down onto the train and don't move until I say it's safe."

Complying, I then question, "Why?"

As there is a zooming noise and I can suddenly sense a roof just above my head, she laughs, "That's why."

"Lovely," I mutter, closing my eyes and hoping this is over soon.

After we have exited the tunnel, she hops back up and tells me, "Grab Bandana, I'll get Kirby. This is our stop."

Staring at her like she just suggested we leap off of a moving train, which she did, I gasp, "But the train is not stopping!"

"It's not going to, not for us," she laughs again. Well, she is obviously having a good time. I am growing more and more concerned for her mental health.

Still wondering whether she is in possession of all of her mental faculties, I pick up Bandana while Sakura carefully grabs Kirby. "Just do what I do, and you'll be fine," she reassures me with a smile. "We're gonna jump off of the back and fly off, okay?"

Nodding, I follow what she does, and after getting off of the train, we fly a ways, both of us still having to carry our companions that can neither float nor air-hop.

"You guys probably think I'm crazy," Sakura smiles over at us apologetically, "but train-or-subway-roof-riding is one of the easiest ways to get around here. Anyway, here in a minute we'll be at the airport. There, we're going to sneak into the baggage center and find a suitcase that's headed to NYC and that's big enough for all of us. Once we're on the plane and we've taken off, we can get out until we're about to land."

"How is the luggage getting to this, er, NYC?" I inquire, worried that it will be just as dangerous of a process as the train idiocy was.

Looking ahead, she explains, "It's called a jetliner. It's like a starship, only a heck of a lot bigger, and it doesn't go off-planet."

Trying to clarify, I ask, "So this 'jetliner' is going to fly us there? Why can we not just fly ourselves?"

"Do you really wanna have to carry us any longer than you have to?" Kirby points out with a mischievous grin.

Before I can reply, Sakura adds, "And even if we didn't have two puffballs to carry, you can't fly as far here as you can back home without getting exhausted. Plus, it's several thousand miles, which is way farther than you'd ever have to fly to get anywhere in Dreamland. The first time I went to Tokyo, I flew myself to Los Angeles and got some rest there, then took off again, intending to fly myself to Japan, where we are now. Problem is, that's a lot farther than I realized, and I got lost. Thank goodness, I blew into Hawaii a couple of days later, looking half-drowned thanks to a tropical storm I got caught in. Trust me, if you're going overseas, a jetliner is the only way to fly."

Trying to glance up at her, Kirby wonders, "How many times have you done this?"

"Hundreds, maybe even thousands of times," she replies with a sad smile. "I get around a lot. Whenever someone shows up, I have to go find them, after all, among other escapades."

"Just how long have you been here?" I ask her gently.

Looking out into space, she sighs, "Way too long." Growing brighter, she goes on, "Well, time for us to land. Be very quiet, and follow-"

"What you do exactly," Kirby finishes for her with a giggle, while Bandana tries to give her a 'smile.'

Grinning at him, she nods, "Right."

Well, what follows seems to me to be a comedy of errors. Every time Sakura sees a suitcase that she thinks we could all fit in, it is padlocked shut, and she will not let me try to cut any of them open with Galaxia. She claims that it would take too long to saw through. This is Galaxia we are talking about, it can cut right through anything- or not. No magic. I keep forgetting. This is highly inconvenient.

"They're wising up to me," she mutters in annoyance.

Getting a bad feeling, I demand, "What exactly do you mean?"

"Sh," she hisses at me, then murmurs in reply, "This is the way I get around, like I said earlier. Whatever case I get in, I have to mostly empty, and then whoever it belongs to finds themselves without their stuff. The padlocks are them trying to protect their stuff from me and the other Other Dimensioners, although they have no idea that it's us doing the object removals."

Finally, she finds a big enough case, which she hurriedly empties and mostly zips all of us into. It is a squeeze, especially seeing as how two of us have wings we cannot get rid of.

"Okay," she whispers after we've all mostly settled, her and Kirby curled up together in one corner, me and Bandana trying to fit in the rest of the case. "Here in a minute, a couple of Humans are going to throw us onto the airplane, which is probably going to be fairly uncomfortable. Whatever you do, don't make any noise. After they've shut the plane and taken off in about, eh, twenty-ish minutes, then we can get out. So, once I quit talking, no noise until I say it's safe."

She falls silent, and about a minute later, we are indeed picked up by someone singing along to some annoying song in the language of the Ancients and quite literally thrown into something. Although it really does hurt, we all manage to keep our mouths shut.

After what seems like an eternity, they quit putting things in, close a door, and leave. Several minutes later, the world starts moving around us, and not long after that, Sakura says happily, "All right, we can get out now."

When we open the case onto a dark room, my first reaction is to hold up Galaxia, which of course does not give off any light.

"Don't worry, I've got this," Sakura assures me, opening up the satchel and pulling out a couple of... somethings. I cannot really tell, it is too dark. "Flashlights," she explains briefly, turning one on and handing it to Kirby, then turning the other one on and keeping ahold of it herself. "Well, we'll get where we're going in several hours, you guys might as well get comfortable." Turning, she starts to walk off through the mountains of luggage.

Sitting down on a suitcase, I call after her, "Where are you going?"

Turning back to me, she grins, "Exploring. You're free to come with me."

"What do you mean, exploring?" I demand, getting up and following her.

Laughing, she explains, "Whenever I fly, I dig through the luggage and see if there's anything we can use. Sometimes you can find really good stuff, like iPods and laptops and such."

Completely lost, I mutter, "What is an iPod?"

"A long story," she chuckles, then leads me up a tower of luggage and throws open a case, beginning to sing some annoying Human song. "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so-"

Rolling my eyes, I glare at her, "Please, stop. That is very annoying."

Narrowing her eyes at me for a moment, she then grins wickedly and starts loudly singing, "I don't care! I love it! I don't care! I love it, I love it!"

"Stop!" I order, glaring at her even more forcefully now.

Switching songs, she disagrees, "I never, never, never stop for anyone-"

Sighing, I rub my forehead and question, "Can you somehow find an annoying song to use to reply to anything I say?"

"We don't even have to try, it's always a good time!" she sings, still grinning at me like the cat who ate the canary.

"Please stop, Sakura," I sigh.

Growing gentler, she agrees, "Okay, if it's really that annoying, I'll quit."

******************************************************************************

Sakura's POV:

Well, I've already quite thoroughly succeeded in ticking off Meta Knight, and I've probably also got him convinced that I'm insane. Just peachy. Well, Geo did warn me, I guess.

After singing and getting myself mad at, I went and sat with the two boys for awhile, chatting animatedly with them about anything and everything until they got tired/bored and went to sleep.

Now, trying to act happy, I dig through the suitcase that I've just opened and pull out a fedora. "Cool! I like fedoras!" I murmur to it. Putting it on, pulling it down over one eye, and turning back to Meta Knight, I then announce in a British accent, "The name's Dee, Sakura Dee. Agent double-O-seven in Her Majesty's secret service."

Looking lost, he wonders, "What?"

Laughing, I take the hat off and put it on him instead, then snicker as he narrows his eyes at me.

"Why are you doing this?" he sighs in exasperation. "You are acting like a crazed child."

Using a retro-TV-evil-spy accent, I explain, "Because is fun, Boris. Is almost as fun as vhen ve are keeling moose and squirrel."

Looking even more lost, he murmurs, "Why are we killing a moose and a Squirtle?"

"No, darlink. Not moose and Squirtle, moose and squirrel. Do you not speak ewil spy?" I laugh at him, then take the hat back and resume my normal voice. "I'm keeping this, it's cool."

Narrowing his eyes, he says warningly, "Is that not stealing?"

"Technically, yes. Do I care? No," I shake my head at him. "Unless they're idiots, the Humans have traveler's insurance."

"What does that mean?" he demands, glaring at me again. Well, I should probably get used to this, I guess.

"It means that if I take their stuff, they get paid for it. It all works out on both sides," I sigh, then unwillingly put the hat back in the case and close it. "But if it makes you happier, I won't take it."

"Hmph," he mutters, then goes to draw his cloak around himself and discovers yet again that he can't.

Trying to cheer him up some, I suggest, "Once you learn how to fold your wings in, we could find you a cloak or something to wear on top."

Looking over at me in something resembling interest, he inquires, "How do you fold your wings in?"

I demonstrate by folding my wings to my back, like a bird. "It takes some time getting used to, but eventually it becomes natural. It makes sleeping more comfortable, too."

"Really, Sakura, how long have you been here?" he wonders aloud as he tries to copy what I did with my wings.

Growing quiet, I sigh, "Just quit asking. If I decide I want to tell you, I'll tell you. You've got your war stories, I've got mine."

Growing concerned, he glances back over at me again. "What do you mean, 'war stories?' What war stories do you have?"

"Let's just say that even though we've only ever lost one Other Dimensioner here in the Home Dimension, it's still an uphill battle to stay hidden and safe," I explain, sitting down on a suitcase and looking away from him. "I don't want to talk about it, okay? Just understand that I've been here quite awhile, I don't like it, and I have no way to get home. Now that you guys are here, it should help a lot." Feeling sad, I finish, "As you've probably already figured out, I've changed in a lot of ways. But I'm still Sakura, I'm still me. I wish I could explain it better, but I can't really. It's... complicated."

After a minute's silence, he sighs, "Very well. I can accept that." Coming over and sitting down on a case not far from me, he gently asks, "Are you all right?"

Giving him what I hope is a reassuring smile, I answer, "I'm not great, but yeah, I'm all right. I'm sorry for irritating you, and stuff. It's just been a long time since I've seen you, and I guess I'm trying to break the ice or something. And it's awkward on both sides, because it's only been a day or two for you, and I'm so different, but it's been years for me, and you guys haven't changed at all."

"It has been years?" he questions in surprise from where he is now inspecting his sword. "I was thinking several months, at the most."

Shaking my head and laughing sadly, I reply, "Nope. Not even close."

"I am sorry," he murmurs, looking at me sadly as he carefully sets Galaxia down beside him.

"Sorry never helped anyone," I mutter shortly, then apologize, "I shouldn't be so short with you. You don't know what I've been through."

"You can tell me if you want," he suggests, giving me a kind glance.

Actually, that sounds nice, to finally share everything with someone, but I shake my head anyway. "Maybe sometime, but not right now," I decline politely. "You have your secrets, I have mine."

Nodding once, he agrees, "I can accept that, for now."

"Thanks," I sigh, then unfold my wings and instead wrap them around myself. "I'm not going to be able to sleep, so if you want to rest, I'll keep watch."

"I doubt I will be able to sleep, either. But what is preventing you from sleeping?" he questions, sounding concerned again. He's such a worrywart.

Shuddering, I reply, "Nightmares, mostly. That, and a general paranoia of something bad happening if I let my guard down."

Glaring at me yet again, he huffs, "You are turning into myself. You are not allowed to turn into myself."

Laughing, I disagree, "Isn't imitation the highest form of flattery?"

"I do not care. You are not allowed to turn into myself," he repeats, more forcefully, and I laugh again.

Growing serious, I ask, "But what if I've already turned into you?"

He hasn't even learned the half of it yet, after all. He doesn't know about the hundred Other Dimensioners that I lead, or about the jumping off of buildings, or of the fact that I never let myself really sleep anymore, or about Solar, or about so many other things...

Giving me a gentle look and moving so he's right next to me, he murmurs comfortingly, "Well, then I guess I will just have to try to turn you back into yourself."

Smiling softly, I lean against him and allow him to protectively curl one wing around me. I've missed this so much. "So you forgive me for irritating you, then?"

"Of course," he agrees, and I can hear a smile in his voice. "Just try not to let it happen too often, all right?"

Giving a quiet laugh, I agree, "Okay. I'll do my best, anyway."

"That is good enough for me," he nods, then we both fall silent and just sit here together, just like we've done so many times before, so long ago. Well, it hasn't been that long for him, I guess. Yippee for paradoxes, am I right?

As he drifts off, even after his claiming that he wouldn't be able to sleep, I allow myself a hopeful smile as I prepare for a long, silent flight. I was serious when I said I wouldn't be able to sleep, so this is going to be a long several hours for me.

Maybe things won't magically go back to the way they were before... But you don't need magic for everything. Trust me, I've gone completely without it for almost twenty-one years.