Leif was sitting on a bench in the capital city. He had a smile plastered across his face as he glanced around at the city surrounding him. It was a beautiful day, with a sun shining high above and not a cloud nearby to bother it. Not hot enough to make it unbearable outside, but warm, with a little breeze that came by every so often and fluffed up your hair.

This was one of the premiere parks in the capital city, an artificial land of grass and trees and strategically placed walkways, statues, and playgrounds. Leif came here a lot. He loved nature, enjoyed every second he could spend in it and away from the work of city life. Today he wasn't here though just to sit and be one with the surrounding world.

The young man's blonde hair was ruffled from behind by an unknown person. Unknown, though Leif had a good guess who it was. Only two people liked to ruffle his hair and one of them was his brother who was back home.

His brother...not much of a brother though since one of them was blonde haired and the other had dark brown. Leif thought more about his brother and how they looked different and similar and tha..................they..............ght.......................dc

...........feeling.................

..................wasn't it?............

The sky made a large popping sound and Leif thought back to the person rubbing his head. His eyes drifted up and met with the blue ones of the person looking down on him from above. "Well hello there you," Leif said.

"Hi cutie," Allyson smiled at him and gave him a little wink. "I grabbed you the chocolate bar you wanted. " She dangled the candy in front of Leif's eyes, waving it back and forth like she was hypnotizing him. "But you'll have to pay up for it."

"Uhm..." Leif's eyes slowly followed the chocolate back and forth. He patted his pockets and remembered he had left his money back at the house with Porter. "Well I uh...I love you with every fibre of my being already but I could give you my soul in exchange for the candy bar."

"How can I trust you on that mister?" Allyson gave him a cheeky sly look and pulled the chocolate away, leaving just her and Leif staring at each other from these awkward positions, with her chin almost on his forehead. Her blonde hair fell down around her face and tickled his ears and cheeks. He had a flash of her with a red scarf around her face, thinking of her regular duties but he shook it away.

Leif reached up gingerly and gently grasped the sides of the girl's head, pulling her down a little as he stretched his head up. Her eyes had closed in preparation but his stayed open to look at her beautiful features, so he could never forget them. Their lips touched, softly at first, but they both drew in tighter together, fusing together for a moment before he slumped back down. "You seal the deal with a kiss then."

Allyson giggled a bit like a little child and beamed at her partner before Leif snatched the chocolate bar away. Allyson did her best to try and wrestle it away from him as he tore through and wrapped and started munching on his favourite snack while still holding his girlfriend at bay. She toppled over the bench into his lap and the two burst out laughing.

Leif looked down at her with warmth in his heart and she did the same to him. If he could've, Leif would've frozen this moment forever and put them into an eternal loop, to live like this for eternity. And he watched as Allyson's features slowly changed and hardened, gaining a shiny, metallic feel to them. Her eyes turned cold, they shifted and the iris began to move, as if focusing. And Leif's own hands had turned purple, getting harder by the second.

Allyson was Alpha. Leif was Sigma.

Sigma screamed and burst into awareness, panting and heaving and wondering if he even had organic body parts inside of him that required oxygen anyways. There were cables connected to every portion of his body and he saw the reflective glass of Doctor Roth's glasses looking down on him from above, pulling things away.

The android sat up on the medical table and held onto his pounding head. "What was the result doctor?" he managed to say.

"Not as good as I had hoped," came the reply. Roth was looking over a readout on one of the computer terminals. "As I had feared, many of your original memories have also been corroded or wiped out by your mind. What remains is in fragments, as you might be experiencing. I could not restore all of them but at least managed to unlock them. The rest is up to you to access them over time as they come back together in their bits and pieces. Maybe one day you'll have most of your original memory restored but for now if you want to know any more about yourself you'll have to get it from other people. You cannot just look inside yourself for the answers. "

"Lovely." Sigma looked over at Alpha floating in the vat. He hadn't just been connected to her; they had been lovers. "Her memory is completely gone correct?" Sigma nodded at Alpha and the doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe there is a tiny little sliver in there somewhere but I doubt it very much. She is gone I'm afraid."

So then they were lovers and one of them would never know...

* * * * *

Grimsley awkwardly stepped in front of his farm in Easley. Piloting the Goliath had been no easy task, nothing like being in a tank. Now that he was outside of it his legs were wobbly and shaking and Ronald was rolling around on the ground behind him laughing. Apparently the old man had ridden in one of those battlesuits before and so it wasn't as large an ordeal for him. Grimsley had other reasons to have shaky legs though: two girls. One of them had beautiful black hair and a glow about her that reminded him of endless fields of flowers. The other one had a frying pan.

It was Aunt Shauna who answered the knock on the door to her farm, mumbling and grumbling at the idea of being bothered in the middle of cleaning. As soon as she opened it though to see her nephew standing in the door in a very dirty military uniform, hair in a mess and legs quivering, she immediately stopped her whining. Instead she reached to the side for the spare pan she always had hanging on the coat rack and pulled it off.

The sound of the cast-iron cracking against Grimsley's face scared birds out of nearby trees and they scattered and landed on the shoulders of the motionless Goliath beside the house. Ronald cringed when he saw Grimsley go flying and roll along the ground and he contemplated running back into the cockpit and fleeing. Grimsley had never mentioned this kind of threat when he had talked Ronald into coming here.

Aunt Shauna raced out of her house though and scooped the battered pilot off the ground into an enormous bear-hug that nearly crushed his spine. "How dare you return here looking like that," she whispered to him as she held him in her arms.

"Don't worry, your tears will wash away the dirt," Grimsley said as he felt the warm water on his shoulders running down his back.

"Hush young fool. Why are you here so soon?" Aunt Shaun placed Grimsley back on the ground and standing. He wavered for a moment as the world was still spinning before his vision and balance reset.

"I've seen some strange and terrible things during my time in the military aunt. I learned a lot and I went through the experience of father's tank being destroyed." Grimsley paused, a little choked up at the memory.

"Oh my dear, I'm so sorry I-"

"No aunt, it's alright," Grimsley cut her off and motioned to the large warmachine to the side. Shauna took it in with shock, having not realized it was even there she was so caught up in seeing her nephew. "It lives on in the Goliath there, as does dad. They're still with me forever. But now I have to be the pilot of a bigger weapon, of something different. I have to go see things in this world, and destroy evils I didn't know existed." Aunt Shauna looked at him with a softness in her eyes he had never seen before. She wasn't her usual angry or judgemental. She was understanding. "I was kicked out of the army aunt, so I'm a rogue now. My partner Ronald and I are going to go and fight battles where we find them in an effort to purify this world." Ronald came up and did a bow, kissing Aunt Shauna's hand.

"The lad ne'er told me her had such a lovely sister!"

"Oh my sir, well I really am his aunt you know."

"You don't say! You wouldn't look a day over thirty you know and I-" Ronald was interrupted by a punch from Grimsley that sent him flying away.

"Why is it every old guy who meets my aunt has to it on her? Gross. So you're ok with me leaving then Aunt Shauna? I mean you aren't mad or anything?"

The older woman placed her hands on her nephew's shoulders. "I've heard those words before, heard them from my brother when he left. And I know there ain't nothing I can do to stop those words once they're in motion. You're going places whether I like it or not. But I do want to know why you came back here to Easley."

"I thought I should tell you and..." Grimsley looked past Aunt Shaun to see Raven standing in the doorway of the house, her black hair blowing in the wind. She was holding down her apron to keep it from also billowing around and staring at both of them. "I have something I have to tell her as well."

"Say no more boy." Aunt Shauna stepped aside and let the pilot by.

Grimsley gulped down nervousness as he approached. Apprehension, fear, excitement, it all hit his stomach at once and made him queasy. "Hi Grimsley," Raven said, blushing a little as the two locked gazes and then averted their eyes away.

"Raven I...listen to me, because I have something to say." The young woman nodded in response. "All of my life I have looked at girls and pined and thought they were these wonderful creatures who lived in a world I would never be a part of. I saw one and another and thought they were all just as fascinating as the last. But then one day I saw you and I knew that you were different, that you weren't quite the same as every other girl I had gone past."

Grimsley paused for a bit and realized his hands were shaking. He glanced over towards Ronald and saw the old man urging him on. "I...well I mean with you I feel...I realized that you're special Raven and that I don't really find a lot of special girls out there in this world and I while I still think that girls live in another world I think for you I would like to be a part of that world, just this once. I'm going away again to fight for good and justice and to keep people safe, to make sure that people like you can study your flowers in safety. But I want to see you when I come back Raven. Not just see you once but forever." Grimsley swallowed hard. "Raven, will you marry me when I return?"

The wind rustled through the fields of Easley, plucking petals off of flowers and blowing them between Grimsley and Raven as the two stood in silence. Grimsley held his hands together to keep them from rattling and Raven had leaned against the frame of the door a little to support herself. Suddenly, she straightened up and stood quite stoically. "Grimsley," she answered. "If you come back one day to this house a survivor of the war you are going to wage then you will find me here waiting for you." She smiled and did a little curtsey before closing the door.

"What...what happened?" Grimsley stood there, bewildered and baffled.

"I think she just said yes there son," Ronald said as he approached the young man.

Aunt Shauna came over and ushered the two back to the Goliath, urging them to leave. "When you figure out girls you might understand what her answer was Grimsley dear. Now get out there to the world before I change my mind about you." Grimsley and Ronald knew what would happen if the lady did change minds and so they scrambled back into the battlesuit and settled into the cockpit.

"That was weird Ronald. I don't know how I let you talk me into asking her for marriage." Grimsley flicked on the ignition, feeling his body begin to vibrate with the machine.

"Romance is all about the big bold move my boy! You can only be all in or you fold. And you just won the jackpot I reckon." Ronald tried to wink at Grimsley but did so to the back of his partner's head since he sat behind him. Neither of them had formally been trained as Goliath pilots and so they very clearly needed the both of them to operate the thing.

After a few shaky steps, the two wobbled out to the north, striking a course towards adventure and hopefully to a new battle somewhere over the horizon.

* * * * *

"What happened to the plans?" Christian hissed to the viewscreen.

"We were clear on our desires to meet and on how we would do it. But you went and revealed your weapons to us Emperor. You think we did not notice those things you paraded around?"

"I am allowed to advance technology in whatever ways it takes us."

"You do not advance! What you are using is a fusion of our technology, of the sins we committed. You think that you can use it against us do you?"

"I said nothing like that. In fact, they may have been offered as gifts if-"

"Silence! You put on a display of power and so we did the same with Orellia. We want to show you that your new toys and fancy weapons are really nothing compared to even the peons that we command. The Jahari are not someone to make an enemy out of Emperor. Do not test our patience. For now, any future meetings are off. We will decide what to do with your planet."

The viewscreen flickered and went blank. Christian smiled in the darkness of his room. Let the Jahari get angry. Let them become enraged enough to attack the earth again and come up out of their stinking holes in the ground. Let them think they were intimidating. Christian wanted to make an enemy out of them. It was all part of the plan...

* * * * *

Sigma was back on the medical table but this time they had pushed it over so that it sat next to Alpha's tube. The cyborg still floated motionless in the liquid, her life suspended by the system hooked up to her body. If one day the power were to fail then she would be nothing more than a metal shell. But then again, without her memories, wasn't she one already?

"Are you ready Sigma?" Doctor Roth asked. He had finished hooking up the different cables and wires to Sigma's body once more but this time they were mostly linked with Alpha's in the vat.

"I think so. Will it revive her then?"

"I'm going to need to use a chunk of your programming and copy that over to Alpha. Each of the Enigma soldiers had slightly altered variations in an effort to get one right. Obviously yours was right and Syn's worked out so I'm going to use bits of yours to fix up Alpha's. I'm also going to give her a jump from your energy core to see if that helps get her system running."

Sigma stared hard at the girl in the tube. Ochenkov had opened an eye from meditations and was watching with curiosity. He wanted to see one of these creatures come to life, particularly this one he had heard so much about, the one that had started all of this for him.

Doctor Roth pushed some buttons on his computer terminal and Sigma felt his brain go fuzzy. His vision blurred with it but he demanded to focus, to watch the girl he had loved when he was still Leif. The girl he still loved today, with his memory slightly restored. The girl he would see brought back to life.

Bubbles drifted up in the vat, slowly drifting past the cyborg's face. Alpha still had her blonde hair and the armour she had been given was a golden colour to match. Sigma wondered how it would look flying through the sky. What kind of fighter would she be once she was...

There was a twitch in one of Alpha's fingers, something so tiny and minute it would go unnoticed to anyone else. But Sigma saw it. He had a feeling in his chest as if his heart was fluttering but he knew his heart couldn't do that function anymore...could it?

Then her eye fluttered and opened.

A/N: A whole lot of storylines converging and expanding all at once. A new road for Grimsley...and a bride awaiting him? And what happens now in the world with three Enigma soldiers? How will Alpha behave?!

Thanks for the comments and support guys, one to go for the big 50!