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January, 2013 When the Young Freedom students got back home from Christmas break, or rather found themselves on campus again steadily for the first time, there was a message for them from Citizen, calling them to meet with him at the 13th Floor right away. Citizen had been very busy in the weeks and months leading up to the break, working with the school and his mentor Miss Americana, on the project they'd all signed on for: the stealth mission to the Erde variant where an enslaved city of Tronik was a cybernetic captive of a collapsing Nazi regime. The shiny, glossy headquarters of the sometimes-troubled team looked busy and lived in as the team got there, and Sharl ushered everyone in with a tight look on his face. The various holo-emitters in the main conference room were all playing images as they arrived, familiar images to those who'd taken their other-dimension classes: massive Nazi super-tanks moving across the landscape of a battered United States, heavily-armed and armored German super-soldiers in combat with determined Resistance fighters, and a thousand other scenes of a world at war. Sharl waved his hand to silence all the machines, leaving only the grim images playing out behind him. Without preamble, he said, "We have to go. We have to go now." He coughed nervously, his image flickering, and added, "Over the holiday, Miss A and I made contact with Erde-Sharl and the leaders of the resistance movement in that universe's Tronik. Their Reich is running out of Ubersoldaten, so they're building an army of combat droids to take out the Resistance. Plague weapons, chemicals, anything designed to destroy organic life. And the worst part is, they're planning to use Tronikians as the software. A sentient program can do things even the best non-AI can't, especially when you destroy the sections that allow for emotion and personality." His jaw tightened. "They've already started. Miss A is in New York getting the last of the parts we'll need for a real gateway, but our departure time is tomorrow." Sharl strongly suspected she was watching, but his relationship with his mentor right now wasn't such that he could ask. "A...defector captured by the Liberty League last year gave us the plans for the base in what the locals used to call Missouri, and the other Tronik gave us the passcodes we'll need to get in without bringing all the Ubersoldaten down on us. The school's been cleared on it and we're all good to go...if you all are still in, that is," he added, a little belatedly. He was a little out of breath, but that was what happened when you still thought you needed to breathe: program or not. "Even though we're not going to get in trouble now that the school signed off on it, we are still putting ourselves in a lot of danger."

July 2012 Freedom City was an especially alien place in the summertime, given that Citizen had come here from one of his too-few visits back home. The heat poured off the naked alien sky overhead in a hot, moist blanket of humidity, the bizarre scents of humanity en masse rising from above the streets as he wafted his way through the sky towards Claremont Academy. Citizen had been in contact with Miss Americana since his departure, of course, as well as sending emails to his friends, but this was the first time he'd been back on Claremont's campus since his departure at the end of the formal school year. It was also the first time he'd brought his friend. "Hey, come here, Lora!" called Sharl, snapping his fingers towards the sky and bringing forth his dog! Lora was a black and brown canine from the German Shepard breed, an alien creature who'd had to board with a programmed sitter at Miss A's placewhile he visited a city where such creatures would have been an alien menace. But here on the streets of Freedom City, Lora was just another dog. It had taken some work to bond with the creature, but she was a nice doggie. Gina had made her well. Lora jumped up and licked her young master's face for a moment, making him sputter and reset his glasses, before he affectionately scratched behind her ears and went to look for his friends, cyber-dog in tow. Lora's holographic paws skittered lightly as he headed up the steps into the dorm building that he and Koshiro had shared.