A hole in reality ripped itself open over the river walk.

  Actually it's more appropriate to say at there were a lot of holes. The lush green walkways beside the river were pelted with tiny shards of metal at the speed of time. It was like glass from a broken window had shredded the curtains during a tornado. Blue rifts in time opened up and vomited their commuters out onto the ground.

  Soon larger chunks began to rain down onto hill, bowling balls, cars, and eventually a chunk of metal the size of a small house, cratered into earth, and slowly slid down into the river.

  Onlookers could only gawk at the destruction.

  They couldn't imagine the truth behind what they were seeing, they had to assume a satellite had crashed to earth. They could summon no reasonable explanations for the blue portals, and simply dismissed the images from their mind, not long after they were gone.

  Down in the river, among the burning wreckage, came some movement. A hatch opened up, and Sapphire Bloodmoon poked her head out of the wreck. "Not my best entrance." She coughed, covered in scrapes and dust. She was lucky Sora hadn't completely devoted herself to the teleportation technology The Guardians used, otherwise she would have been trapped in there. "Thank God for small miracles." She looked about herself, and was surprised to see that The Hook River was slowly swallowing up Wolf.

  There really was a river!

  Back in her time, the dried up ravine was where the scavs and cadets lived.

  She'd made it!

  "Sora, I made it." She waited for a response but got nothing. "Clay, Kitten, anyone out there?" Still nothing.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. Not that it needed any help. She'd practically crash landed on an alien planet. She had palpitations to spare, but surely she couldn't have been the only one to make it out! "Sora!" She screamed now, hoping her voice would carry out over centuries.

  "You alright down there?" A man called up from a pedestrian bridge.

  Sapphire finally noticed that there were others slowly approaching. Cautiously checking to see if she was alright, to see what all this metal was about.

  "Crap." She was still in her flight suit, and without Sora there was no way to dematerialize Wolf.

  She was going to have to run.

  She needed to find The Guardians for this front, and let them know what happened.

  Let them know that the future was lost.

  The brown and white flight suit was not as conspicuous as it would have been in 2125, but she was pleased to find that people of this time weren't too suspicious of the way she was dressed. If she'd gone to visit the first front, she probably would have been stoned as a witch. As it stood she simply got a few curious looks, and every now and then a longing gaze from a man.

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  As if.

  She wracked her brain for the name of the 2025 girl she'd met during the first wave.

  Marge?

  Some awful yester year name.

  Midge?

  Margo, that was her name. Margo. She piloted that cannon Guardian.

  Already her heart ached for Wolf. The good and great heart of that dedicated machine had been her own not so long ago, and now it was sinking into the river. No doubt to be drudged and taken away by some primative government. Maybe even a corporation. Who knew? Maybe Luna LC got their start by dissecting future tech. Wouldn't that be ironic? She started this all to save the world from monsters, and just ended up giving other monsters a weapon.

  Mago. How many Margos could there be in a city like this? The airport wasn't even capable to sending rockets to the moon yet. There had to be a million people tops in this place.

  If she was in Wolf she could have just sent a thought out, and found the girl immediately, her and her comrades from this time.

  Alas, again her thoughts went to the river.

  This city was just lucky she blew her load out in the future. Wolf was a missile platform. If she collided into that hill with her full payload... BOOM!

  She supposed she was lucky too, in that way.

  First order of business would be to grab one of the comms devices people in this century were running around with. She could override it's functions with her synch device, and start looking for Margos, shelter, and some food. It truck Sapphire just how unprepared they were for this war. They needed some kind of central spot to meet their fellow guardians in case something like this happened. She tried thinking of a place that had survived three centuries of history.

  The Old Court House! That'd been established in 1895, there was no doubt a couple of portraits of her ignoble bloodline hung there.

  It was a great plan, for the start of the war. Not so much now, when she needed it.

  Therefore, she would have to steal a comms device.

  Down the street a stylish couple was walking towards her, while having an intense conversation. It drew Sapphire's eye the way anything curious, and potentially juicy would. The girl was a young lady with blonde pigtails. It reminded Sapphire of a pair of pigtails she'd been with a few nights ago, then her stomach churned. They'd been lime green, and they were gone now. "You were seriously amazing, the Kaiju barely landed a finger on you. The only reason you died, was because it was cheating..."

  It was hard to believe that the end of the world could be her lucky day, but Sapphire was starting to feel like a rabbit's foot! She'd survived the fight, survived the crash, and here were two guardian pilots who'd just fallen onto her lap! Who else would be talking about Kaiju?

  The boy had an annoyed air about him. Stylishly cut brown hair, brown eyes and.... Clay?

  A lightbulb of recognition went off in Sapphire's brain.

  She opened her mouth to flag down the passing couple, but a young lady interposed herself, and flashed a screen in Sapphire's face. "Excuse me, do you know the way to Rudie's?"

  Sapphire was stunned for a moment by the woman's interception. Her eyes refocused to look at the primative little map on the woman's comm device. "Wow you guys have Rudie's even back here, that place can't fail." Forget the courthouse, Sapphire would take a steak house any day! Feeling sly she tapped her fingers to the side of her temple and activated her synch device. She then touched her fingers to the device and implanted it with a bit of her code. If was had been mistaken about the couple, having this device running for her in the background would at least help her along the way. "Let's see..." She squinted at the screen and wondered if she could actually help the tourist out with the old layout of the city, there were so many landmarks missing, hard to believe the place was ever this small...

  Before she could process her answer, a gag was pulled through her mouth, and she was lifted off her feet, and thrown into the back of a van.

  There was lots of screaming and fighting, but it didn't get Sapphire anywhere. She wasn't Kitten. Otherwise these idiots would be red smear against the back of their own van. She was Sapphire, who'd never had any need to fight anyone until a few months ago. She liked who she was just fine, but there are flashes in one's life where it would really pay to be a killer cyborg.

  Despite her bloody, bitey defense, she was eventually hooded, bound, and injected with something that made everything, go dark.