Station Eight, Issue #1: Begins The Dance, a Mega Man crossover
by Wilek Nereus at a private address

Disclaimer: At the end to avoid spoiling the story

Disclaimer II: This is my first ever serious attempt at fanfic. It's a
little slow-paced at times, but I'm new to all this. Our heroes up at
Manhattan have no part in this, I'm afraid, but they will show up in a
future story, I promise. Don't flame me. Please? ~_~

You may be a little worried that I did not give an address. I have security
concerns. Any and all feedback can be posted at the Comment Room at
www.s8.org/gargoyles. Click either of the two Comment Room links.

Thanks: Arianna for encouraging me to set off on this whole fanfic thing;
	Bud-Claire for getting me interested in Merlin Missy's fanfics;
	Merlin Missy for getting me interested in Gargoyles/Animaniacs
		crossovers and ultimately giving me an idea for a future fanfic;
	High Scribe Gregory--or Greg Weisman, as he prefers to be known to
		others--for creating the best animated series ever;
	Anyone and everyone I might have missed.

***WARNING: EXTREME VIOLENCE IN PLACES***

One
	Arawn, Death-Lord of the realm of Annwn, sat in meditation in 
his inner sanctum in his palace, stretching forth his spirit sense in an
effort to find Dyrnwyn, a mystical sword, the only weapon that could end
his life. Whoever possessed it had the power to overthrow Arawn and take
the crown of Annwn themselves. He searched...and came across something which
made him forget Dyrnwyn completely. A disturbance in the timelines, one which
threatened the very existence of not only Arawn, but also Annwn
itself, as well as the other world that Arawn's friend and fellow Annwn noble
Lady Arianna often inhabited. The disturbance was in the far future, and in
yet a third timeline than Annwn and the world of Arianna's other friends,
but it was a threat to them *all*. For perhaps the first time in his ancient
existence, Arawn was truly afraid. Trillions of lives were at stake. He sent 
a telepathic call to Lady Arianna that she would hear, no matter where she
was..."My lady Arianna! You are needed! It is urgent! Please! Come quickly!"
He went to his throne room to wait for her. Even *he* could not deal with
this alone...
	It was night, the busiest time for Station Eight. The Comment Room,
a common meeting place for humans, gargoyles, and Fey, was a popular place
for members of all three races to come and talk about things in general,
but the most popular subject was that of a group of gargs from the tenth
century A.D. who had been put into a sort of hibernation for a thousand
years and who had been woken up in the modern day. They were attempting to
remain in hiding from humanity, but the small enclave who frequented the
Room--"room dwellers", as they called themselves--knew about them, admired
them, and studied the many odd adventures they'd had. Wilek Nereus, Miriam
Baxter, Lady Arianna, and a mysterious trickster Fey called Blaise were
among the students of these misplaced warriors. For several hours, they 
had been discussing the finer points of the history of this "Manhattan Clan",
as they were thought of. However, the discussion was ended abruptly when
Arianna, herself a Fey, suddenly looked up, as though she had heard something
quite startling. She appeared to listen for a few seconds. Wilek and Miriam,
being gargoyle and human, respectively, were puzzled as they had not heard
anything, and Blaise looked as though he had indeed heard a sound but could
not identify it. Miriam asked, "Is something wrong, Ms. Arianna?"
	"It's a telepathic call from Arawn. I've never heard him this
rattled by *anything* before. I'd better go see what's up." Arianna stood
and teleported out of the Comment Room,
	"What was that all about?" Wilek, a blonde-haired, dark-blue-skinned 
gargoyle asked no one in particular.
	"I don't know; the call was directly for Arianna and I couldn't catch
all of it. But I know this much: Arawn sounded scared enough to stain himself
just then. Anything that can terrify the lord of Annwn..." This from Blaise,
who, being Fey, had also heard the call. "Maybe I should go with Arianna and
see what's up."
	Miriam didn't think so. "I wouldn't, Mr. Blaise; I should think that
Mr. Arawn rather dislikes uninvited company." Miriam was *very* formal; she
always called everyone, even her best friend Wilek, by "Mr." or "Ms.".
	"Well," Wilek said, "if this is as bad as it sounds, I bet Arianna
will be back for us soon; she and Arawn will need all the help they can get."
	
	In Annwn, Arawn explained his dark revelation to Arianna. "I saw
a great disturbance, right across every thread of the tapestry of all the
creations! All life is threatened, an apocalypse of all worlds grows near, 
unless it can be stopped!"
	"But," countered Arianna, "if this thing is triggered by something
that happens in the future of an alternate Earth, how can any of us stop it?"
	"I know a time travel spell. It is complex and takes much effort, but
I can send you to a time long enough before the disturbance for you to be
able to stop it."
	"How many people can you send?"
	"What do you mean, my lady?"
	"Arawn, even though I'm one of the Children of Oberon, this doesn't
sound like something I can stop alone. I'll need to bring help."
	"The people at that insipid little establishment?"
	That touched a nerve with Arianna. "Arawn..." she growled.
	"I take it back. But really, what could they do?"
	"We saved the world once, or don't you remember?" Several weeks ago,
Wilek, Miriam, Arianna, Blaise, and several other room dwellers had foiled
a plan by evil gargoyle Demona, whereby a spell was cast on the water supply
that made everyone who drank of it turn into a primitive animal. Miriam had
acquired the ingredients for a counterspell, then they all had helped take
down Demona's evil plan. No one had known of Demona's accomplices, who had
actually cast the spell, but they ran off when Demona was defeated.
	"I remember, milady...I am able to send you and three others."
	"Good. I'll be back with them." 
She melted into the shadows of the throne room, reappearing in the 
Comment Room.

Two
	Arianna teleported in, and there were questions to be answered.
Wilek asked the first. "What was that all about?"
	"Arawn says that something major is about to go down, something
that could destroy everyone in every world in every timeline everywhere. He
wants to send me to stop it, but I can't go alone."
	"Who are you bringing?" Blaise asked.
	"You, Wilek, and Miriam, if you want to come."
	Blaise volunteered, as did the other two.
	"Okay...I'll have to bring you back with me to Annwn so Arawn can
send us through time. Gather close." Arianna huddled close with the other
three, and teleported them all to the throne room of the Death-Lord. "Arawn,
we're here. What now?"
	"I will now tell you everything that I now know. Not much more than
I have already told, but you need this knowledge...Whatever is about to
occur, it has something to do with the Phoenix Gate..."
	Now *there* was a conversation stopper. The Phoenix Gate was the
most powerful artifact ever created, able to transport its user anywhere
in space or time. No one had any doubt that it could cause destruction
on the massive scale feared by Arawn...but he wasn't finished. It got worse.
	"...and it showed up in the future, causing the cataclysm, *after*
beginning its Timedance."
	Oh, *snot*...several years ago, Goliath of the famed Manhattan
Clan had activated the Phoenix Gate and sent it into its vortex without
a mind to guide it. This started it on a mad, aimless journey through time
which the room dwellers knew as the Timedance. This "dance" later swept 
Brooklyn of the aforementioned Manhattan Clan into its demented embrace...
but if the Gate had visited the future and caused this ragnarok *before*
finding Brooklyn...it was at least as bad as Arawn had feared.
	"Oh, no...What can we possibly do?" Blaise wondered aloud.
	Arawn did not bother to answer. He instead looked at Wilek. "Where
I am sending you, it will be daytime. You cannot go."
	Arianna didn't like the sound of that. "But Arawn, if things are
as bad as you say, we'll need a gargoyle on our side. He has a talisman which
can keep him in living form during the day."
	"Retrieve it." Arawn said.
	Arianna asked Wilek, "Where do you keep it? Where do you live, for
that matter?" Wilek proceeded to describe the location of his home, then
where he kept his amulet. "Thanks," Arianna said, then teleported off. She
returned less than a minute later, with the sun amulet in tow. "Here", she
said to Wilek, offering him the trinket; the gargoyle thanked her and hung
the artifact around his neck.
	"If you're all ready, then?" asked Arawn, letting them make various
final preparations.
	Miriam was concerned about something, though. "By what means shall
we return here, Mr. Arawn?"
	Arawn took no note of the misuse of his name. "Lady Arianna shall
call me telepathically, as I did her. Because of the chronodimensional
distances involved, I will not know her words, but I shall hear her voice,
and I will bring you all back here."
	By now, the travellers were ready, and told Arawn as much. He began
a chant, in a language known only to himself, Arianna, and their most trusted
mages; the chant lasted almost a full thirty seconds, and at the end of that
time, an orb of black energy formed between Arawn's outstretched hands. With
a final phrase in that bizarre language, he sent the orb flying into the
center of the quartet before him. They were enveloped in a globe of black
fire, a dark mirror of the Phoenix Gate effect, then they were gone.
	Arawn returned to the spirit search, no longer for the Dyrnwyn sword,
but for the four warriors and the Gate. He looked over the grand tapestry
of time and space, tracing the black thread caused by the spell he had just
cast. Then he traced the myriad golden threads which had their genesis in
the travels of the Phoenix Gate; from the Gate's destruction in the 90's,
back through its mad waltz with the Timedancer into the past and future,
then to Goliath's sending it on the dance...and there, just after that, it
went into the time and place to which the four had been sent. If Arawn had
considered anyone or anything other than himself worthy of worship, he
would have prayed for the safety of his friend and her friends. They had a
very dark road ahead...

Three
	The future, at least from the standpoint of the travellers. 
There were still banks in this day and age, and, like banks of the past, 
they were unfortunately prone to being robbed. The thieves of this day, 
however, were not simply the human miscreants of old, and they did not 
steal simply to satiate their greed.
	They were androids, sentient machines, and they stole to fund the
twisted projects of their insane inventor.
	Metal Man, an android--although they were more often called simply
"robots", as inaccurate as that was--had full-body armor of a dark magenta
color, a faceplate of the same color, and attatched to the forehead of his
helmet was what looked like a sawblade, bizarrely reminiscent of the mirrors
surgeons used to strap to their foreheads to direct brighter light into 
whatever patient they happened to be wading about in. Metal Man rather liked
the analogy, as the robot ninja had used his throwing blades to slice open
more than a few people in his existence. He led the charge into the bank,
replicating and throwing one of his Metal Blades through the transparisteel 
door, shattering it and neatly decapitating a bank patron.
	The sadistic robot watched the woman's head roll for a moment, then
leapt into the bank atrium and killed the guards, clearing the way for his
compatriots, Gemini Man and Pharaoh Man. Gemini strode in first, the 'bot's
mirrored armor glinting in the light of the bank. He surveyed the carnage
his ninja friend had caused. "Interesting work, Metal", he said, "I should
hire you to decorate my own little pad," he said, chuckling evilly.
	Then came Pharaoh Man. As his name suggested, he was designed after
the pharaohs of ancient Egypt; his armor was a desert sand beige,
with a golden, black-striped pharaoh's crown atop his head and a faceplate 
of the same material as his armor. "Enough talk. Wily sent us here to do a 
job, and by the name of Osiris, we *will* get it done."
	"Right," Gemini replied. Then he spoke to the tellers, "We require
all the currency to which you have access to be deposited in a container,
provided by our associate." Knowing his cue, Pharaoh went back out to their
getaway vehicle and returned with a large bin which hovered on antigravs.
Gemini's right forearm abruptly disappeared via molecular replication, to
be replaced by the powerful sustained-beam megawatt laser weapon called the
Gemini Laser. "I expect you know the consequences of resistance." Gemini
then espied a human attempting to hit the alarm. "Oh, no no no no no," he
chided, then lasered a large hole in the man's torso; the beam continued
through and made an equally large hole in the wall, exposing the innards of
the office beyond. "Anyone else wish to be a hero? Or a martyr? Step on up!"
he dared. "No? Quite good." The tellers frantically began putting money in
the hoverbin.

	After the job was finished, the three 'bots began to cart the 
ill-gotten gain out of the bank. "A pleasure doing business here. 
We'll be sure to stop by again," joked Metal. The criminals started toward
the door...
	...And stopped in their tracks as the oddest phenomenon that they had
ever seen occurred before them. An orb of black flame appeared, then
vanished, depositing what appeared to be three humans and some kind of
dark blue, winged monster. A replica droid of some kind? None of the 'bots
stopped to ponder the nature of the newcomers. Metal threw a blade into
the group, all of whom dodged it with ease. Then the monster lunged toward
Metal. Metal leapt about fifteen feet into the air, dodging the charge, and
threw a blade, which again missed. The critter waited till Metal landed, then
spun around and whipped Metal with his tail, knocking off the robot's
mechanical head.
	Meanwhile, Gemini and Pharaoh had problems of their own. Two of the 
humans were apparently not what they seemed, as the Gemini Laser could not 
hurt them. Pharaoh tried his own weapon, the Pharaoh Shot, a projectile of
superheated hydrogen that was essentially a miniature star, but to no avail.
The third dodged the projectiles quite expertly, and returned fire with a
primitive bullet weapon. Crude, but a lucky shot could penetrate a robot's
duotronic brain, quite effectively putting him out of commission. Such a
lucky shot penetrated the brain of Pharaoh Man, and he fell silent.
	Gemini tried his trump card, the strange ability for which he'd 
been named. He concentrated for a moment, and a copy of himself was 
replicated in the room. It was a drain on power, reducing him to plasma 
weapons instead of his laser, but it would do. The two Gemini leapt about 
the room, firing plasma bolts at the four intruders. As before, one male 
and one female went unscathed, and the creature and other human female 
dodged too quickly to hit. The monster managed to jump up and catch one 
Gemini in mid-leap, bringing him down and pummeling him until the Geminis' 
shared power source was weakened too much to support both of them. One 
Gemini disappeared, and the other said, "I know when I'm beaten." He 
collected the metal remains of his comrades and escaped before anyone could 
stop him.

Four
	"Who the...What was that? Who did we just chase off?" Wilek
wondered aloud.
	"Whatever they were, they weren't human, garg, or Fey," offered
Blaise. "I'm not sure they were even alive. They didn't have souls."
	"No souls? Some kind of machine?" Miriam asked.
	Arianna wasn't sure. "Physically, yes...but they seemed so alive..."
	"Artificial intelligence!" Wilek interrupted. "We must be awfully
far into the future if they've made sentient robots."
	"Do you think they have something to do with the Phoenix Gate?"
wondered Arianna."
	Wilek answered, "There's no way to know yet." Then he seemed to
notice his surroundings for the first time, notice the mangled corpses that
littered the marble floor of the building. He clamped his claw over his
mouth to keep himself from vomiting; he'd always had a thing about blood
and gore. He swallowed hard several times, then when he trusted his brain
not to order his stomach to present its contents in a public forum, he spoke.
"Oh, my--did they do *this*?!"
	Miriam was somewhat less squeamish. "It seems a virtual certainty,
Mr. Nereus." He would prefer her to call him Wilek, but it was a quirk of
hers that Wilek had gotten used to.
	The four abruptly realized that there were a lot of people in here
that hadn't been killed by the three mechanical men. They wandered over to
their saviors in fascination and a little fear, not quite knowing what to
make of them. One woman stared at Wilek. He noticed and looked back, a little
afraid himself. He quite expected everyone in the room to start screaming,
running, and making shouting phone calls to Animal Control. Contrary to his
expectations, however, the woman seemed to realize that he meant her no harm.
He smiled weakly--a Herculean chore, given that the room resembled a
slaughterhouse as closely as it resembled a bank--and greeted her. "Umm...hi.
I'm Wilek. And...you?" He held out his claw to shake hands.
	The woman seemed nonplussed; she hadn't expected this whatever-it-was
to be able to talk. "I...I'm June. You...you saved our lives."
	Miriam took the opportunity to find out a few things. "I am Mr.
Nereus' personal assistant Miriam Baxter. Would you happen to have witnessed
what occurred here?"
	"Some of Dr. Wily's enforcers tried to rob the bank," June replied.
She seemed a little confused by the question, as if she expected Miriam to
have known the answer already.
	"And who is Dr. Wily?" Miriam interrogated.
	June was *really* confused now, as if she thought *everyone* knew.
"You've never heard of Dr. Wily?"
	Miriam was about to pursue the line of questioning when the shrill
sound of police sirens split the air; they hadn't changed much from the
travellers' own time. Apparently, someone had hit the alarm after the
criminals had been taken care of. Some cops ran into the building. They
were on their guard, but they had been informed of the robots' retreat,
as well as the odd team that had come to the rescue, so they did not expect
to be attacked. After a few minutes of interrogating witnesses and examining
the crime scene, they determined that there had been a robbery attempt by
known Wily enforcers Metal Man, Gemini Man, and Pharaoh Man; and that the
strange people who had arrived had foiled it.
	"HIT THE DIRT!" Wilek suddenly exclaimed, startling everyone, as 
he saw two more 'bots brazenly stride in with the cops. Wilek and Miriam 
combat-rolled to dodge an expected attack--which never came--and the two 
Fey prepared to unleash magic attacks. The four abruptly realized that 
the newcomers weren't attacking. One was a 'bot with a very human-looking 
face; he was dressed in simple medium-blue armor with a matching helmet. 
The other was a robot *dog* of all things, dressed in a red canine version 
of the other 'bot's armor, helmet and all.
	"Wh...? It's just Mega Man and Rush." The officer who spoke was
utterly baffled at the four's reaction to the two heroes.
	"They are not affiliated with the three robots that just left?" This
from Miriam.
	"You're not from around here, are you?"
	"Uh oh, you guys, we're starting to look like rubes here," Blaise
whispered to his friends.
	"Uh, actually, no; we're not from around. In fact, it's kind of a
long story," Wilek replied to the cop. ~More than you know,~ he thought.
"We don't know much about what's going on with these robots and this Wily
dude; maybe someone could brief us?"
	The blue robot that a cop had identified as Mega Man stepped forth;
the officers and civilians respectfully made way for him. "That could best
be done by my creator, Dr. Wright." He addressed the officers. "Will you
be needing these guys?"
	"Well, we'd like to identify them, but we could do that later."
	"Good." Mega addressed the odd quartet. "Who, or what, are the four
of you?"
	Miriam answered, "I am Miriam Baxter. The...human female is Arianna,
the human male is Blaise, and the gargoyle is my employer Wilek Nereus."
Miriam knew better than to identify Arianna and Blaise as Children of
Oberon; she imagined that everyone thought the situation bizarre enough
without knowing that the "mythical" Faire Folk ran about for real.
	"Gargoyle?" Mega looked at Wilek. "Is that what you're called? I've
never seen anything like you."
	Wilek was surprised at the lack of fear everyone seemed to evidence;
in his own timeline, people usually screamed, fainted, or soiled their
garments at their first encounter with a garg. "Uh, yeah. Do you know about
us? My race, I mean?"
	"There's an entire race of you? The only living gargoyles I've ever
heard about are in myths from the tenth century, and mythology isn't my
strong suit."
	~The tenth century?~ Wilek thought slyly. ~If only you knew, 
blue bot, if only you knew.~ He said out loud, "Well, there's a race of us
in the timeline I'm from. But I don't know anything about this place."
	"Oh, that's right. I'm Mega Man, and I'm usually the one who stops
idiots like what you just chased off." He petted the robo-dog next to him,
who wagged his tail happily. "This is Rush. He can transform into vehicles
and such. Invaluable sometimes."
	Arianna chuckled. "Vehicles? That cute little thing?"
	Mega was a little annoyed at that. "Well, not tanks or anything. But
bigger isn't necessarily better."
	"Sorry."
	"It's OK. Maybe I'd better get you all to that briefing." The others
agreed. Mega Man opened a little flip-up viewscreen embedded in his left
arm. "This is Mega to the Wright residence. Doc, you there?"
	The voice heard over the comm-link was that of a male, about in his
fourties or fifties. "Ah, Mega! How did it go? Did you foil the robbery?"
	"Well...that's kind of a long story. The robbery was indeed halted,
but before I arrived. Set the teleport chamber for six, counting Rush and
myself. You're about to have company."

Five
	In his cloaked skybase, Dr. Albert Wily pored over his research
notes. He was always involved in several projects at once, trying to create
new machines and robots to further his schemes of world conquest. He was
interrupted by a beep at his door. "Come," he rasped in his heavy German
accent.
	It was Gemini Man. Wily said to him, "Ah, you're back with the money,
yes?"
	Gemini looked at the floor. "I'm afraid not. There was a
complication."
	Wily was enraged. "Do you mean to tell me that you allowed that
indigo imbecile Mega Man to chase you away again?!" He took a wheezing 
breath; he had a strange lung condition, most resembling short bursts
of asthma, that made it a little difficult to breathe on occasion.
	"No, sir, it was others."
	Wily's rage turned to confusion. "What do you mean, others?"
	"Three humans and a creature of some kind. They teleported in and
made scrap out of Pharaoh and Metal, who are being rebuilt. If I had stayed,
I would have joined them. It was over before Mega even arrived."
	"Hmm. Did you recognize them? What was the creature?"
	"I do not know, sir. It was mostly humanoid, with wings, a tail,
horns, and dark blue skin. It took down Metal in seconds."
	"Really...this is most interesting. Oversee the restoration of
Pharaoh Man and Metal Man."
	Dismissed, Gemini bowed and left. Wily decided that it was time to
check on his latest pet project. He rose from his desk and walked to the
reinforced, triple-layer quadritanium door at the back of the room. He put
his hand to the scan plate on the wall, which read his DNA sequence and
admitted him. He walked in and the door closed. He went to the vertical
transparisteel cylinder at the back of the room, within which a beautiful
gold and jeweled object spun merrily in an anti-grav field as scanners
poked and prodded and probed it with various sorts of energy fields in
an attempt to unlock its secrets. Wily looked, entranced, at the stunning
gold bird which adorned the front of the shield-shaped object. He'd known
that this trinket was more than it looked like from the moment it had simply
appeared in his office. He'd become even more enthused when he found the
thing in a mythology book and read of its great power--a power that Wily
would harness. ~Soon, my little Phoenix Gate, soon,~ he thought, ~you and
I will rule all...~

	After a few seconds, Mega, Rush, Blaise, Arianna, Miriam, and Wilek
disappeared from the bank in a blue flash of light, courtesy of Dr. Wright's
teleport system, and reappeared in his office. Wilek was a little
disoriented; he'd never been teleported before. At least not so unexpectedly.
	"Ah, Mega! I presume that this is the 'company' you told me about?"
Dr. Wright greeted the robots and newcomers. He was a human male in his 
fifties, a skosh on the portly side, with white hair and a bushy white 
beard; he in fact looked a little reminiscent of Santa Claus from human 
children's mythology. He introduced himself. "I'm Dr. Thomas Wright. And 
you?"
	If Miriam was tiring of introducing herself and the others so many
times in the course of a few hours, she hid it well. "I am Miriam Baxter.
The blue fellow is my employer Wilek Nereus, and the other two are Blaise
and Lady Arianna."
	"*Lady* Arianna? I'm among nobility, then?"
	"Yes," answered Arianna, "but you don't have to kneel or call me
'milady' or anything."
	"How delightful. And...what exactly are you, Wilek--may I call you
Wilek? You seem absolutely fascinating."
	Wilek was still flattered by the fact that he was treated with 
curiosity rather than fear. He briefly wondered why the humans here seemed
so much less skittish than those of his own timeline, but thought better
than to look a gift dog-goyle in the mouth. "I'm what's called a gargoyle.
We used to act as protectors of humans, but ever since 994 A.D.," he 
hoped that the this time and dimension used the same calendar system
as his own, "we've been in hiding from humanity; in my timeline, 
there was a betrayal by humans that almost drove us into extinction. Ever
since, humans have, as a rule, hated and feared us, although it seems your
timeline's humans are kind of more...enlightened, I guess."
	"Oh, dear. How can an entire species hide from another for so long?"
	"We're much less numerous than humans, and we're only awake at 
night."
	"But here you sit before me in the day."
	"Oh, that." He held up his sun pendant. "This is--call it a kind of
machine--that can keep a garg awake during the day." He decided to tell about
their mission. "We were sent to your time to retrieve a much more powerful
machine called the Phoenix Gate. It's a device that can travel 
anywhere in space or time."
	"What? How is this possible?"
	"I don't know, but it's very advanced. It's verbally and psionically
operated; all you'd have to do is think of a place and time, speak the--"
he dared not call it a spell in front of a scientist--"code phrase, and you'd
be there."
	"No wonder you don't want it in the wrong hands."
	"It gets worse." How to explain the Timedance? "The thing's 
malfunctioning. Its...control systems have failed and it's jumping around at
random through space and time. Somehow, if we don't retrieve it before its
next jump, it will destroy everything."
	"Everything as in...?"
	"Everything as in *everything*. Every world. Every timeline. Every
moment in time. Existence will cease to exist."
	"Oh, my word. How can we help?"
	Miriam replied, "Have there been any unusual occurrences lately?
A strange object appearing?"
	"Umm...no, I don't think so."
	Blaise spoke up. "We know it's still in this timeline. If we could
just find a way to look for it...Do you have any aircraft? Something from
which we could conduct a search?"
	"Well, there's my personal transport. It has a maximum cruising
altitude of several miles."
	"Good," Arianna contributed, "the higher the better."
	Wilek decided that it was about time to find out what all this was
about evil robots and a Dr. Wily. "Dr. Wright, several times we've heard of
a Dr. Wily who apparently ordered the attempted robbery we stopped this
morning. When Miriam asked someone who he was, they looked at her like she'd
crawled out from under a rock. I guess he's pretty infamous here, but you
already know we're new to all this. What's going on?"
	Wright's face clouded over with a hundred bad memories. "A few years
back, Albert Wily was my assistant. We worked together on designs for
intelligent machinery that would require less human supervision, freeing
humans from mundane physical labor and allowing them to work on science and
art and other things that truly deserve the time and effort of human talent.
	"We realized that the only way to maximize robot self-sufficiency
was to make the 'bot truly sentient. Albert and I worked and worked, and
finally, we had built the first sentient machine, a welding robot named
Blues."
	Mega Man finally decided to speak. "My brother."
	Wright continued, "Yes. We later built Rock; a robot that had 
an adaptive intelligence matrix, so he could learn to use any tool ever built
simply by examining it, and his sister Roll, a housekeeping 'bot."
	Wilek stifled a laugh. "Blues, Rock, and Roll?"
	"I'm rather a music buff," Wright admitted. "In any case, they were
such successes that Albert and I went on to build six more robots, for
specialized jobs. This is when Albert's insanity began rearing its ugly
head.
	"He stole all my robots except Rock and Roll and began altering their
minds, making them completely amoral and loyal to him alone. Blues was the
first one he tried, but he went a little insane himself. He struck out on
his own, became an independent robot, going by the alias of Proto Man.
	"When Wily began using the other six to try and overthrow the
government, I knew that only Rock could stop him. I altered Rock, making him
able to use any weapon as well as any tool. I strengthened his armor and
upped his tactical abilities, and Mega Man was born.
	"Since then, Wily has been building more and more robots based off
my original designs, and using them in his plans. It wouldn't surprise me
to learn that he's found this Phoenix Gate of yours and is attempting to
adapt it to his own purposes."
	"That has to be the answer," Arianna realized. "Wily does something
to the Gate to cause it to destroy everything. We find Wily, and we find
the Gate."

Six
	"Easier said than done," Mega Man responded to Arianna's summary of
the situation. "If my experience with Wily is any indication, he won't
be easy to find. I've destroyed *six* of his fortresses, and he still has
a main base of operations that I've never found. I'll bet the Gate is there."
	Blaise decided that it was time to drop the big bombshell. "Dr.,
despite what Wilek said earlier, Arianna and I aren't human."
	"No?"
	"We're called Fey."
	"Say again?" Wright had evidently never heard of the term.
	Blaise offered an explanation, carefully avoiding referring to
anything in terms of magic or mythology. "We're a race of beings with
powerful psionic abilities."
	"Psionic abilities? I thought those were only theory. Are you aliens
of some sort?"
	~Well, at least he believes us,~ Arianna thought. "No, we're from
Earth, just like you," she said to Wright, "but the point is that we can get
a sense of the location of psionic machines like the Gate. The higher up we
are, the better our powers work. If we're anywhere near the Gate, we'll 
know it."
	"But Wily could have it anywhere in the world. We could spend months
searching."
	No one much liked Mega's pessimistic view of things. Miriam offered,
"They can sense the general direction of such a powerful artifact no matter
where they are in relation to it."
	"That," Dr. Wright responded, "will be a very big help. Perhaps we
should start looking, then?" Everyone agreed. "This way." He stood up and
led the other six--the room-dwellers plus Mega Man and Rush--to the
landing bay for his private skycraft. It had just enough passenger space
to seat the six who would be going comfortably. Wright put his hand on the 
scanner and was allowed entrance. All except Wright got in, sat down,
and fastened their restraints; since Rush couldn't buckle up himself, Mega
did it for him. Wilek had a bit of trouble situating himself due to his
wings and tail--human vehicles were simply not designed to accommodate
garg physiology--but eventually he got comfortable.
	"Aren't you coming, Dr. Wright?" Arianna asked.
	Wright laughed, but the laughter had a very slight tone of sadness
to it. "My dear, thirty years ago I might have said yes...but, I'm afraid
I'm not as young as I used to be. See you soon." The door closed, and the
aircraft took off.

	The red robot once known as Blues observed a craft take off from
the Wright lab. ~He almost never uses that thing,~ Mega Man's twin
brother thought to himself. He was an independent robot, fighting not
for or against good or evil, but to maintain the balance between the two.
Sometimes that meant fighting Wily, sometimes Mega. ~Something major must
be up,~ he thought. Proto Man, quite undetected, broke into the hangar 
bay and stole Wright's other craft. Since he'd fought both sides, he was 
hunted by both sides; anyone, man or bot, in such a predicament quickly 
learned the art of hiding. He activated the ECM, or Electronic Counter 
Measure, system and trailed Wright's craft. He adjusted his bright yellow 
cravat and wondered aloud, "I wonder if this has anything to do with what 
happened at the bank. Probably. Which side will I be fighting on this 
time..."

	Up in Dr. Wright's craft, Blaise and Arianna prepared to begin their
search. "We'll need to concentrate," explained Blaise. "You can talk
among yourselves, but try to keep it quiet."
	"Right," confirmed Mega Man. Then, in a quieter tone, he spoke with
Wilek and Miriam. "From what I heard from the police, you guys handled the
robbery pretty well. What exactly can the four of you do?"
	Wilek said, "Well...I'm extremely strong by human standards. It's
a gargoyle thing. Despite my wings, though, I can't actually fly; I can
only glide. Like a hang glider. As for Miriam, you'd never get her to
admit it, but she's probably the best shot in the country. I once saw her
use a handgun to destroy a fake squirrel from three hundred yards."
	"It was two hundred ninety six yards, two feet, and eight inches,
sir," corrected Miriam.
	"If you had any other questions about her, *that* should answer them
all," Wilek half-joked.
	"What about the others...Fey, did you call them?"
	"Blaise and Arianna? Oh, what *can't* they do. They can fly,
shapeshift, emit energy, who knows. It can be draining after a while,
though. And only pure iron can really harm them, although I guess resisting
other weapons can tire them out."
	"They sound like valuable assets in battle."
	"You said it. What can you do, anyhow?"
	Mega launched into what sounded like--and probably was--a recitation 
from a technical journal. "I posses a ten-megawatt plasma cannon which
deploys via molecular replication. I am capable of connecting to the brain
of a disabled enemy robot and downloading its specialty weapon's *.REP
files into my own brain, thus giving me the ability to use that weapon.
My brain has a maximum clock speed of sixty terahertz and a storage capacity
of nine hundred teraquads. My armor is a hyperceramic polyalloy rated at 
20 RU and its intramolecular shielding is rated at 100 SBD. My maximum 
visual range--"
	"OK, OK, I get the point," Wilek interrupted. "Jalapena, that's a lot
of features. Wonder how much Wright will take for you," Wilek joked. Mega
would have been offended if Wilek had been serious; as it was, he merely
laughed for a moment--more than Wilek thought the rather dour robot capable
of.
	They chatted so for hours, as the search continued all day and 
throughout the night. Mega offered, "Do any of you want to go back and get
some sleep? You've got to be tired."
	Wilek took off his amulet, not turning to stone as it was night, and
answered, "Speaking for myself, I'll be taken care of when the sun comes
up. Does anyone else want to go back?"
	Miriam responded a little huffily, "I can sleep here as easily as 
anywhere, and the Fey do not require sleep." She promptly dropped off to 
slumber.
	"Hmm," Wilek mused. To Mega Man, he said, "Well, if we find that
base during the day, I want you to put this," he handed Mega the sun
pendant, "around my neck. It's the only thing that'll wake me up."
Mega was a little confused, but he agreed. Wilek thanked him, and at that
precise moment the sun rose, and Wilek entered the stone sleep common to
all gargoyles.
	"Whoa," Mega said, astounded by what had just happened, "talk about
sleeping like a log." He looked back at Blaise and Arianna. "Are you two
getting any impressions about the Gate?"
	Blaise answered, "Only that we're getting closer to it all the time.
Just keep going this way."
	"Right."

	Unknown to anyone, Proto Man's stolen craft was tailing Mega Man and
his four guests. "What are they doing?" Proto mused. "Where are they off to?
I know this is connected to the bank somehow." He carefully scanned the
other craft, using passive sensors only; active ones would alert the other
to his presence. The passive scans, however, were enough to alert Proto to
the fact that more than the usual strange goings-on were going on. "What
the...?" he gasped at the return sensor readings. They showed Proto's
brother Mega Man and Mega's dog Rush in there, little surprise, and the
human readings from inside were unexpected but not nearly as *weird* as the
readings he was getting from whatever the bleep those other three things
in the passenger compartment were. Two showed nothing in the sense of
genuine life signs, only compact and highly organized energy fields. The
third was more similar to organic life as he knew it, but these vital signs
were too bizarre to be human--and then they suddenly stopped. Did the thing
die? No, there was still brainwave activity, consistent with REM sleep. Some
kind of suspended animation, then. This was bigger than Proto thought. Did
Mega and Wright enlist the help of these things to fight Wily? Proto didn't
much like Dr. Wily, but he could not allow either side to defeat the other,
at least not yet. He continued to follow the craft containing Mega's strange
passengers. It would be an interesting day.

Seven
	It was about 1:30 in the afternoon. The craft had been going in one
direction for nearly twenty hours, ever since they'd taken off. Blaise and
Arianna insisted that they drew ever closer to the mysterious Phoenix
Gate which they said would cause all worlds to die, but Mega was beginning
to lose hope. He hadn't seen hide or hair of any kind of base of operations
where Dr. Wily might be hiding the Gate. "We're very close! I'm surprised
we can't see the base from here," Blaise exclaimed, giving Mega an update
on the status of the hunt.
	"Wait a minute. The government is developing a gadget they call a
'cloaking device' that enables any craft to become completely invisible.
If Wily has stolen one of those, he could work on the Gate in absolute
secrecy."
	Mega's revelation didn't go over well. "We could collide with the base
and never even know it was there until it was too late to do anything."
Arianna fretted.
	"Your powers," Mega continued, "may be the only way we have of ever
finding the base." Then, alarms began to sound from the craft's control
board. "What now?" He looked at the screen--which showed a green robot with
a helicopter-style rotor on its back, flying in their direction. "Gyro Man?
Where'd *he* come from?! This thing's sensors should have seen him a mile
off! Rush! Thruster pack!" In response, the robo-dog yipped enthusiastically
and abruptly transformed into what looked like  the chestplate and backplate
of a red suit of armor, with ion thrusters in back. "Computer," he ordered
the craft, "keep away from the battle area until I return." The computer
beeped in comprehension. Mega opened the ingress-egress door and stepped
through the forcefield holding the air in the passenger cabin.
	Just before he could begin falling, he activated the ion engines and
repulsorlifts on the jetpack that his dog had become and flew over to where
his nemisis awaited. Mega fired a few plasma shots ahead of him, hitting
Gyro Man and enraging him. Gyro replicated two of his remotely controlled
Gyro Blades, miniatures of the rotor at his back, and threw them at Mega 
Man. One of them impacted Mega's helmet, causing minor damage, while the
other one went wide, but circled back around thanks to Gyro's control of it.
	Mega desperately tried to outfly the helix blade, but it relentlessly
followed him under Gyro's expert command. Mega took a different tack,
jetting directly at Gyro Man, then veering off at the last moment. A 
Gyro Blade following Mega Man didn't turn in time and sliced off one of 
Gyro's rotor blades, sending him on a plunge into the sea. Before he could 
hit, however, Mega plugged his finger-mounted datajack into the input port 
in Gyro's head, stealing the GYROBLDE.REP file that Gyro used to create 
and use his deadly weapon. Mega let him go and jetted back to the craft.
	Mega Man reentered the small craft. Arianna and Blaise had seen the
entire exchange between Mega and Gyro. "What was that all about?" Arianna
inquired.
	"That was Gyro Man, another of Wily's robots like you stopped at the
bank. As for what I was doing after I made him fall, I was taking his
weapon. Now I can use his Gyro Blades. Rush, standard mode." The jetpack
transformed once again into the enthusiastic little red robo-dog. "Gyro
couldn't possibly have gotten that close to us without tripping the 
sensors beforehand." He consulted sensor records to see where Gyro had been
at the precise moment he was detected. Mega examined the image--and it
looked like half of Gyro wasn't there. As if he were leaving a cloaking
field. "I think we've found the base." Remembering Wilek's words to him,
he put the sun pendant around the gargoyle statue's neck--and was quite
unprepared as the outer layer of stone burst away from him, revealing
once again the blonde, dark-blue-skinned gargoyle.
	He roared and stretched, then looked around and noticed he'd awoken 
during the day. "I guess we've found the base."
	Mega replied in the affirmative, and Wilek gently awoke Miriam, who
wsa fortunately a very light sleeper. Mega steered the craft toward the
hidden base, which he had by now deduced was a skybase, judging by how far
up they were, and said to his passengers, "Buckle up, everyone, it's gonna
be a bumpy ride!" He steered the craft toward Gyro Man's point of origin, 
and after a few minutes, the enormous skybase very abruptly appeared before
them as they entered its cloaking field. "I was right, it was cloaked!"
Mega took them toward the docking bay. Mega was puzzled by the fact that it
had no door, nothing but the atmospheric forcefield--then realized that Wily
never considered that he might be found, and did not bother with something
he thought he would never need. Mega landed the ship in the docking bay,
and he and Rush and the four room-dwellers leapt out and ran to the heart
of Wily's operations.

	This day had held one surprise after another for Proto Man. First
detecting the odd creatures that his brother Mega Man was toting about,
then seeing their craft simply disappear, then finding a Wily base that
not even Proto had known of...Proto realized that the balance had shifted
too far towards Wily, and that Proto would have to help Mega this time.
Proto didn't respect humans all that much, and didn't much like Mega because
Mega seemed committed to the protection of humans for some reason, but
if the balance was to be maintained, then it would have to be Wily who
would be foiled this time. Proto steered his ship into a different bay than
Mega. Proto would have to hide his involvement until the last possible
moment.

	As Mega, Rush, Wilek, Miriam, Arianna, and Blaise ran down the
corridor of Wily's compound, destroying guard after guard with plasma cannon
or gargoyle claw or Fey power or whatever, Mega realized that none of them
had any idea where Wily might be keeping the Gate. "This way!" Mega yelled
to his cohorts as he saw a possible place from which they might elude the
guards. The six ran to a storage area, which Mega Man and Wilek barricaded
by putting extremely heavy containers in front of the door, destroying the
door's opening mechanism for good measure. He asked the Fey, "Can you find
the Gate from here?"
	Arianna and Blaise closed their eyes and searched with their powers.
They were very close to the Gate, and might be able to get an exact fix on
its location. "It's about...three quarters of a mile north. Something's
happening to it...it's not jumping, Wily's doing something to it...Oh no!
If it jumps while it's in the middle of whatever is going on, it will
destroy everything, just like Arawn said!"
	Mega decided not to ask who Arawn was. "Alright. Let's move." He 
blasted the barricades and door out of their path and blew the metal
stuffings out of a few more guards. They ran some more, and came into some
kind of antechamber...where more of Wily's enforcers awaited.
	There were three: a robot that looked like an all-black Metal Man
with a four-pointed head blade instead of a round one, a green robot that
rather resembled an ancient Greek centaur, and something that most closely
resembled a robotic gorilla. Shadow Man, Centaur Man, and Gut Man.
	Immediately they began the charge. "In the name of Zeus!" Centaur
exclaimed in awe and fear as he spied the fearsome blue gargoyle. "Die, 
Tartarus-spawn!" Centaur reared back on his hind hooves and fired a strange,
coruscating blue shot at Wilek, which missed and hit Gut Man instead. It
was his Centaur Flash, a weapon which could temporarily freeze time and
now had Gut Man in its sway.
	Mega laughed at Gut's predicament. "Ha! Try attacking now, Donkey
Kong!" Mega teased as he charged up his plasma cannon to full power and
fired at Gut Man. As the ape-bot blew up, Mega caught its head and
downloaded its GUTPOWR.REP file, for the rather ridiculously-named Gut
Power weapon, which was simply great physical strength. He didn't need it
just now, but he might at some point.
	"Blast!" Centaur cursed as he teleported behind Arianna and
mule-kicked her with his hind legs.
	"Oh, you're goin' *down* for that, horse-face!" an enraged Arianna
exclaimed. Wilek spared as much attention as he could while fighting Shadow
Man. He wanted to see firsthand as Centaur Man recieved his just desserts
for violating the words of wisdom that a very wise gargoyle had first
uttered ages ago: Never tick off a fairy. Arianna held out her hand and
concentrated, and after a few moments, Centaur Man transformed, from the
neck down, into a bagel. Arianna had left Centaur's head intact so Mega
could download the Centaur Flash. As soon as Mega could stop laughing--
he'd doubled over with laughter when the transformation occurred--he strode
over and took the weapon from a livid Centaur Man. Or should that be Centaur
Bagel?
	 This left Shadow Man. Wilek and Shadow deftly evaded each other's
attacks, and it looked to be a stalemate--until the robotic ninja created
and threw three of his Shadow Blades. The others watched in horror as two
of them tore large holes in Wilek's wings and one of them cut a huge gash in
his throat. Wilek fell and emitted a weak roar of pain, making a horrible 
bubbling sound as air from his slashed trachea bubbled up through the 
blood pouring from his mouth and severed carotid artery. With a gasp and a 
look of horror that no one had thought the normally unflappable assistant 
capable of, Miriam leapt over to the dying gargoyle, produced a penknife 
from her black business suit, and deftly severed the leather strap of 
his sun pendant, removing it and putting him into the healing gargoyle 
sleep of stone, moments before he would have drowned in his own blood.
	Blaise and Arianna glared at Shadow with murder in their eyes. Now
it was *personal*. Before Mega Man could destroy the robot, the two
Fey held their hands before them and pantomimed the motion of squeezing
something in their hands. Immediately, Shadow Man doubled over in what
could have been pain as his armor and internal systems were crushed by
Fey magic. As the robot contained virtually no iron, opting instead for
sophisticated composites, he was essentially defenseless. They left his head
uncrushed, that Mega may claim its Shadow Blade, which he did. He walked
over to the statue lying in a pool of its own blood. "We'd better abort and
get him to a hospital," Mega volunteered.
	Arianna replied, "No, he'll be alright at sunset when he wakes up. The
stone sleep heals him. But we'd better get him out of here so one of
Wily's goons doesn't shatter him. Mega, can you tell our craft to get back
to Dr. Wright's place?"
	"Yeah, but how will we escape?"
	"Wily probably has other craft, and if he doesn't, we can improvise."
Arianna held her hand above the sleeping gargoyle and teleported him back
to the craft they'd come in on. "Send it back." She watched as Mega
activated his commlink and told their craft's computer to return to Wright's
lab.
	Mega and his entourage barreled down the length of the corridor, 
searching for the artifact that might become the uncreation of all...

Eight
	Alarms and sirens blared in the sanctum where Dr. Wily tested and
monitored and experimented on the Phoenix Gate. "Computer, what in blazes
is going on?!" he wheezed.
	"Intruder alert. Penetration into sector three. Emergency situation."
	Wily decided to unleash his newest creation. "Computer, activate and
release Project Darkblade. Mission: Intruder termination."
	"Confirmed."

	Blaise, Arianna, Miriam, Mega Man, and Rush drew closer and closer to
wherever Wily kept the Gate. They finally emerged in Wily's office. "There,"
Blaise exclaimed, "it's behind that door!"
	Mega examined the door. "That's a solid platinum-iridium alloy. It'll
take me a while to break it down."
	That's when a pulse of electricity ripped apart the floor behind them.
They whirled around to have a look at their aggressor. It was another robot,
whose head looked like a black motorcycle helmet with a black visor. It wore
a black cape and all its armor was a black hyperceramic. It floated several
feet above the floor on antigrav thrusters, and two long black blades
protruded from slots in the undersides of its arms. It spoke: "I am
Darkblade Man. You are violating Dr. Wily's highest-priority area. Desist."
	Mega Man answered with a throw of his stolen Gyro Blade. Immediately,
Miriam and the two Fey spread out, throwing bullets and lightning at the
mysterious black robot--and were astonished to see it teleport away, as
Centaur Man had. It threw another electric pulse from its blades, which
apparently acted as electrodes, and flew to its left to dodge Arianna's
own lightning attack. Blaise threw magically energized Tarot cards at this
dark robot, but he avoided them with ease. Mega tried his plasma cannon and
stolen weapons, and only these seemed to score any hits.
	Then, a plasma bolt erupted from the corridor and hit Darkblade Man
squarely in the chestplate at the same time a Gyro Blade did the same.
	Mega Man whirled around to see who had helped them. "Proto Man?"
	"Don't worry," Mega's crimson twin replied, "I'm on your side in this
one." There was no more time for words as the battle continued between
the now six heroes and Wily's dark sentinel. The added help of what, for
tactical purposes, was another Mega Man greatly tipped the balance away from
Wily. The robot brothers managed to keep Darkblade Man busy enough that
Blaise and Arianna's attacks began hitting home and doing damage.
	"Extensive damage," Darkblade Man droned, "returning to repair bay."
Darkblade teleported off.
	"Come on," Mega called to Proto, "help me with this door." Both the
brothers fired their plasma cannons at it--and it didn't so much as dent.
	"It's ray-shielded. Have you taken any weapons?"
	"I don't know, unless...Of course!" He loaded the Gut Power file, 
waited for a few moments as it reconfigured the electromyoclonic fibers that
served as his muscles into a stronger form, then reared back and punched 
the doorwith all his newfound might. The door dented heavily. Another punch,
a deeper dent. A third and final punch, and the door was gone.
	"There it is!" Blaise exclaimed as he saw the Gate spinning in the
analysis chamber that Wily had constructed for it.
	"What?! Who are you? How did you defeat Darkblade?!" an enraged Wily
enquired, cowering in the back of the lab. Wily got part of his answer
when Mega Man, Proto Man, and Rush stepped forth.
	The two bots who had cannons leveled them at Wily while the robo-dog
simply growled. "It's over, Wily. I hereby place you under citizens
arrest," Mega Man declared grimly.
	Wily laughed evilly. "Computer, initiate Protocol Omega; time, ten
minutes!" The computer began to count down. "The skybase is about to self
destruct. Would you like to try restraining me or get out of here alive?"
Unanswered, Wily ran, unobstructed, to the nearest escape pod. As did
Proto Man, although this wasn't noticed until much later.
	"We cannot leave without the Phoenix Gate," Miriam said. Mega used his
still-active Gut Power to shatter the transparisteel observation tube and
grab the Gate. Then, they all ran to the corridors, looking for escape pods.
The team noticed a lot of robots--sentient enforcers of the same kind they
had already faced--doing the same thing. The other 'bots were too engrossed
in the flight for their own survival to notice the strangers. Eventually
the now five found a spare shuttlecraft just big enough to accommodate them
all, and they launched away from the base.
	The skybase exploded, and the shuttle rocked violently as the shields
absorbed the impact of the blast. When the turbulence ceased, Mega, who was
piloting, asked, "Is everyone OK?" Everyone was.
	Arianna was concerned about something. "Mega, is there any way you
could check on the shuttle that we sent Wilek back on? See if he's OK?"
	"Sure." He opened a communications link with the shuttle and sent a
system status request to its computer. It replied that it was enroute to
the Wright lab. "He's fine. Arianna, you said earlier that he'd be alright
when the sun went down. What did you mean? Can that weird transformation
heal him that quickly?"
	"Yeah. Gargoyles can recover from anything during their sleep. I've
seen gargs worse off than that who made full recoveries. About the only
thing it can't take care of is a missing limb or organ."
	Mega didn't want to think about what qualified as being worse than 
having your head half sliced off. "I guess we'll see him tonight, 
then--hey, where's Proto?"

	In another shuttle, Proto Man pondered the day's events. He'd had a
run-in with a couple of--what in the world were they? Sorcerers? Impossible.
Yet there they had been, doing things quite incomprehensible to science. And
although he had not personally encountered the other creature, which looked
for all the world like a living piece of gothic architecture, he had spied
upon it as he'd followed the group. What a creature--a fierce fighter, saved
from death by turning to stone. He'd heard myths of such creatures, but
never, never could he have imagined they were real. He decided to start
reading the myths more carefully. He wondered what other ones were true.

	In yet a third shuttle, Dr. Albert Wily also pondered the day's
events. He had lost the beautiful, enigmatic machine that the legends called
the Phoenix Gate, a machine which, if he could have completely unlocked its
secrets, could have propelled him to world domination. But he had learned
enough. He'd had enough presence of mind to upload all his research files
into the computer of his personal shuttle. He knew that the Gate could
somehow traverse time and dimension, and with enough study of these files,
he too would someday build a machine that could burn down the walls of
time and distance.

Nine
	It was sunset at the Wright residence, and Mega Man, Rush, Dr. Wright,
Miriam, Blaise, Arianna, and even Mega's sister Roll, a robo-cat named
Tango, a robo-bird named Beat, and a bizarre robotic container named Eddie
huddled nervously around the statue of a gargoyle, its face frozen in a
rictus of agony, still stained with a drop or two of its own blood. The sun
sank below the horizon, and the outer layer of stone cracked, then seemed
to burst as the living gargoyle within awoke, He roared, and all present
noted with delight that the roar did not gurgle through a windpipe laid
open by a cruel blade. Wilek looked around, momentarily disoriented by his
new surroundings and the fact that he'd woken up in the unaccustomed
position of being on his back. He felt his throat and wings, and found only
slightly rougher patches of skin to indicate that the formerly mortal
injuries had ever existed. He looked around, saw his friends and
acquaintances gathered around, got to his feet, and greeted them with great
enthusiasm. He even went so far as to hug Miriam, to which her only reply
was to adjust her sunglasses, straighten her suit, and adopt an even 
tighter expression than usual.
	A few hours later, Mega Man, Rush, and the four room dwellers were
gathered in Dr. Wright's office. Wright himself sat behind his desk,
admiring the Phoenix Gate. "This beautiful artifact...could have destroyed
everything?"
	"Yes, Doctor. It contains a great deal of power, far more than it
appears," Miriam replied.
	"Fascinating. I should like to study--" The Gate began to glow dimly.
	"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Wilek exclaimed as he grabbed the Phoenix Gate
and threw it across the office. It never quite bothered to land,
instead disappearing in a ball of fire. It had continued the Timedance.
	The room dwellers breathed an audible sigh of relief. The mission
was over. Dr. Wright knew what had happened, as it had been explained to
him earlier. Wilek said, "If we had never gotten the Gate back..."
	"Boom," Blaise finished.
	Arianna derailed this particular disturbing train of thought. "Let's
not dwell on what might have happened. Dr. Wright, Mega, Rush, it's been
wonderful meeting you all, but maybe we'd better run home. Are you guys
ready?" Blaise, Miriam, and Wilek replied in the affirmative.
	Mega offered, "Maybe you can come back and visit sometime."
	Wilek sighed. "We'd like to, but considering what it took to get us
here, I doubt we could convince Arawn, the one who sent us, to send us back
just to sit and talk."
	With that, the four room dwellers exchanged farewells with Dr. Wright
and his creations, and then Arianna sent the telepathic summons across time,
space, and dimension that would signal Arawn to bring them back home. Within
a few minutes, the orb of black flame enveloped them, and they found
themselves in Arawn's throne room.

Ten
	"My lady," exulted Arawn, "you have stopped the cataclysm!"
	Arianna looked a little annoyed. "Well, give my friends a *little*
credit at least! It's not like I did all the work!"
	"Of course. I thank all of you."
	"Better."
	Miriam piped up with, "Mr. Arawn, when were we returned to? How long,
by the frame of reference of the present, were we gone?"
	"*Lord* Arawn to you, mortal. And I brought you back to precisely
fifteen minutes after I sent you forward."
	"Probably we were barely even missed," Wilek observed.
	"Wait'll the others hear where we've been and what we've been doing!
They'll freak!" This from Blaise.
	"Well come on," Arianna urged, "let's tell 'em! Bye Arawn!" Arianna
brought herself and the other three back to Station Eight. It would make
quite a story.
End

Disclaimer: Everything from the Gargoyles universe is owned by Buena Vista 
and Disney; everything from the Mega Man universe is owned by
Capcom, except Darkblade Man, who I created; Donkey Kong is owned by Rare
(I think); and any and all copyrights I may have missed or do not know about
are hereby hypothetically acknowledged.