Lance and Tai's Dimensional Adventures 1

         Spike stared at the portal in his lab, an interdimensional rift, the exact distortion he had been working so hard to create for months. With this he would be able to travel to other worlds, or even teleport across Earth, the practical and impractical uses were near limitless. Not daring to step through the portal himself Spike reached down and tapped the watch on his arm, the bulky piece of technology had several rows of keys and finally his inputs caused it flash. After three flashes the portal closed. Spike smiled and fell back on his couch, reaching for his phone he relaxed his muscles and reviewed his accomplishments mentally. Without any concsious thought he dialed a number, a number that then caused a phone to ring across the city, a phone belonging to a close friend.
         "Tai? Yeah it's Spike. I've accomplished something amazing. I want you and the others to see this, come by as soon as you can."
         Pulling up to Spike's house on the outskirts of the city Tai wondered what the lunatic who had once convinced him to sit down and watch a bug circus he had personally composed would be calling him to his home to witness. He parked his car in Spike's driveway and climbed out, unlocking the doors to allow the rest of his party out. Lance climbed out of the passenger seat while Jake and Korey stumbled out from the back of the car.
         "Hm, good ol' Spike," Lance muttered, passing his eyes over a dying garden in front of Spike's porch.
         "Yeah, it's been a while," Tai responded, walking around the car toward the porch.
         Jake, the largest member of the party, followed behind Tai, "Haven't been over here since he proposed that bug circus idea."
         Korey chuckled, "Whatever happened to that?"
         "The spider ate the fly," Lance stated as he followed the others up onto the porch.
         "Told him a spider didn't belong in an insect circus," replied Tai.
         The door swung open and the wild haired figure of Spike stood before them. He was dressed in a white lab coat, with denim jeans and a black t-shirt underneath. He smiled wide at his friends and quickly ushered them inside without a word. After being guided inside Lance and Tai plopped down on opposite ends of the couch. Korey took a seat in the armchair at the end of Spike's coffee table, and Jake leaned against the wallbehind the couch.
         "Well?" Lance asked, looking up at the semi-nervous looking Spike.
         "Well, uh," Spike was never that great at revealing his inventions, though ultimately they were, if nothing else, good looking. Design before function was Spike's method of development, "I made this watch."
         Tai nodded, "I see the watch."
         "It's so cool, it's- it-" he stuttered excitedly, "This has got to be my greatest invention yet!"
         "Well show us already," Lance joked with him.
         Without hesitation Spike tapped a combination into the watch, causing a dimensional rift to open above the coffee table.
         "Whoa," was the unanimous reply.
         Everyone stared at the rift for a moment, curious, confused, impressed, but unsure of by what, so Tai asked the ultimate question, "What is it?"
         A look of glee broke out across Spike's face, his joy was unrepressable, "A dimensional rift, a rip in the space-time continuum," he paused, looked across his friends, then continued, "A portal to another world."
         "So we're talking like Mars?" Lance returned.
"No! Not another planet! Another world! Another universe!" Spike was ecstatic, "Or- or- or another time! Back into the past! Or the future! Alternate timelines, or alternate dimensions!"
         Tai nodded his approval, "So your certain it works like that?"
         Spike scaratched his leg with his foot nervously, "Well no…see that's why I invited you all over."
         Korey looked up from his hands, "We are to test this?"
         "I currently have 12 prototypes, they all appear to function correctly," Spike frowned, "But I'm not certain how the coordinates work. I do know that you have the ability to input coordinates, and there's a built-in communicator, that will at least allow communication from one end of the house to the other."
         Jake stood from his position against the wall, "Well you know I'm always up to testing such things."
         "No guarantee we'll come back?" Tai questioned.
         Spike shook his head, "Once you hit a dimension or two I should be able to figure out the coordinates between worlds, I will of course be maintaining a watch here to communicate with you and do further study."
         "Trial and error," Tai smiled and walked into Spike's kitchen, "Well I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored around here."
         Lance smirked as Tai walked back in with two colas in his hand, he snatched one as the lanky youth walked by, "The daily ins and outs of life boring ya? I agree, suit us up Spike."
         "I warn you now," Spike stated, "I don't honestly entirely understand how it works."
         "Understood," they all said unanimously.
         Spike lead everyone down stairs, his basement was his lab, and it was littered with abandoned experiments. Rocket boots, wrist blades, laser swords, it was a nerd's paradise, if he ever completed anything. Finally he had finished one of his grand inventions, he produced a chest with a series of wrist watches similar to the one on his arm. He pulled out four of them and handed them out amongst the group. The four interdimensional adventurers each strapped on a watch. Tai popped open the input panel and stared at the keyboard for a moment. It was a keypad similar to a standard QWERTY keyboard, but much smaller.
         "So we have no clue how the coordinates work?" Tai asked, looking up from the watch at it's inventor.
         "Yeah," Spike sighed, "If you flip the keyboard there's a greek alphabet keyboard opposite the QWERTY board, so far as I can tell each dimension has a coordinate associated with 2 Greek letters and one Roman numeral."
         "How convenient," Tai frowned.
         "So…" a beeping noise came from Lance's direction as he punched keys on the watch, "Alpha, Zulu, One?"
         A rift tore open before them all, Spike smirked, "Have fun."
         The four adventurers stepped through the portal slowly, there was a shifting in their material as they stepped through.

         To say that Tai had a headache was an understatement, when he finally recovered his eyesight, blinking once or twice in darkness, he found that his skull was pulsing. He looked around and found himself in a foul smelling dark room, the likes of which he had never seen, but based on the iron bars he saw across the way from him, he guessed it was the kind of room he had always hoped he wouldn't find himself in. Beside him was what appeared to be a burlap sack, it was filled with straw and stained with blood. There was a bowl in the corner, filled with raw meat and another filled with water.
         Like an animal, he sighed, Spike, this is crazy.
         The sound of approaching footsteps excited him, he leaned up against the wall and stared through the bars at his oncoming saviors. Once the footsteps rounded the corner Daniel was greeted with two men dressed in what looked like some sort of ancient armor, bronze colored greaves and breastplates, with faces hidden by helmets and masks of the same material.
         "Prisoner, I hope you've slept well," the first man stated, approaching the iron bars.
         "I just hope you didn't eat too much," the second chuckled, he unlocked the door and slid the bars away.
         Tai stared at the two, almost terrified now, "What do you mean?"
         "Don't play dumb, it's arena time!"
         "Right, it's time for you, little man, to enter the arena."
         Tai's stomach rolled over, suddenly Spike's adventure seemed like a horrifying idea. He very unwillingly followed the two men up the stairs, practically dragged along, and even more unwillingly sat down before the armor and weapon racks.
         "Pick whatever you like, yo ought to have first choice for your funeral attire."
         Tai gulped, the armor all looked rather shabby, but after moments of consideration he selected a series of light metal plates, covering large vital areas on his legs, arms, and chest, but nothing covering joints. Then from the table he selected a pouch of small blades and a short-sword and buckler. He strapped the buckler around his arm and flailed the blade around once or twice, noticing the uneasiness with which he wielded the blade he grimaced, I'm doomed, absolutely doomed.

         "Ladies and gentleman of the Caesarian republic!"
         Lance blinked himself awake, his head throbbed, the voice echoing did little to help the pain. He looked around himself to find a large crowd of people, all standing, their faces gleaming with excitement. Lance stood to look out across a barren field of sand, surrounded by seating for the crowd around him. An arena.
         "Thank you for coming to the arena! Today we have a special treat for you all! A traitor to the emperor, a wizard, who used his magic to gain access to the emperor's throne room, shall face execution at the hands of your champion, TAROK THE IMMORTAL!"
         The crowd cheered, the cheers echoed across the arena. Lance felt his stomach churn as the gates on either end of the arena dropped, on one side he saw Tai, standing in gladiator style armor, clumsily wielding a sword and shield. On the other side was a behemoth of a man, towering over Tai, with a flail in hand and wearing massive heavy armor.
         Tai you are so doomed.

         It was quite unfortunate, waking up in what seemed a beautiful palace, with head throbbing and body constricted by clothes just slightly too tight for him. Yet Korey stood and looked around and wondered where he was at without any concern for changing. Around him there were others, similary dressed, preparing for the day. A man who seemed a guard entered the room, and began booming orders to the others, from the meager tasks assigned they were evidently servants. The guard pointed at him and uttered three simple words, "To the prince."
         Wandering the vast halls of the palace Korey eventually encountered the man he believed would be this prince. He smiled at his servant, approached him, as Korey stood petrified by the youth's majesty, and said, "We are going to watch the execution of a prisoner today, he faces the city's grand champion, father has arranged quite the spectacle."
         Korey was relieved, sounded like an easy task to him, "He sounds doomed."
         "Oh," the prince smiled, "He is quite doomed."

         Jake stood, towering above the other people in the market place, blending into the constant stream of people as best he could. He walked slowly and carefully, shuffling between people, wary of bumping into more people than he already was. They all seemed to be heading toward the same grand building in the distance. A high-walled ring, where cheering and a booming voice echoed. The closer he drew, the more uneasy he got about the whole thing. Finally he got to a point where he could see into the arena, a short glance of the fight going on, but very few details could be seen from his viewpoint. As he watched, he thought he identified the smaller man who was being bashed around the ring. The short black hair, the lanky body, and most notable: the out of place wristwatch.
         Tai was being chased around the ring by a massive man wielding a flail, slinging the weapon toward his adversary wildly. Tai deflected one blow with his shield and fell harshly to the earth. Another swing almost crushed Tai's skull as he narrowly rolled out of the way. Tai swung his blade fruitlessly toward the behemoth as it lobbed another swing at him.
         Watching the fight, observing the brutality of his comrade's adversary, Jake was convinced of but one thing, Tai, you're doomed.