AN: Okay, this is my first story, but it shouldn't be too bad. This is based on an irritating glitch I've encountered in Origins when I started the side story thing, and is mostly inspired by a weird dream I had a few days ago about what it'd be like for the characters.

Disclaimer: I don't own Spectrobes. Yadda yadda. You know the drill.

"Okay, Jeena, looks like this is the final battle!" Rallen shouted, pumped up to fight. "Let's head for the Krawlosphere!"

"Roger!" Jeena nodded, just as eager to destroy the wretched thing herself. "Time for takeoff!"

But as they started for the cockpit, a loud alarm sounded. Jeena went to the computer to see what it was picking up, and she didn't particularly like what she saw. "Oh no..."

Rallen walked up next to her. "What is it?"

She looked over the monitors once more. "The ship's computer has detected some extremely powerful Krawl on Wyterra. The activity seems to be coming from around the village." She glanced at Rallen. "We'd better go check it out."

He nodded in reply. "Yeah. We should."

While walking to the village, Rallen, with his hands behind his head, decided to pass time by talking. "So, just what do you think these Krawl are?"

Jeena thought for a moment. "I'm not sure… If the computer's data is correct, they're stronger than most other Krawl we've faced."

"I'm sure we've taken down worse." He shrugged. "This'll probably be a walk in the park"

She rolled her eyes at her partner. "Watch it Hero Boy. Remember what Kamtoga said about that attitude?"

He sighed. "Yeah. yeah. I remember."

They had just started to pass the ruins when the air started to darken and grow thick, and some Swar-like Krawl appeared from the darkness around them. Rallen and Jeena both assumed a battle stance, and released their Spectrobes: Komodoros and Zozanero.

They commanded their Spectrobes to attack several of the Krawl, while they went for the ones that weren't hit by the attacks. Rallen soon realized that his current weapon, his axe, wasn't quite as effective against these Krawl as he has hoped, so he did something he would always do in this case: switch to a more effective weapon.

But this time, something extraordinary happened.

Everything, including Rallen and Jeena, froze in place. Then a bright, white light proceeded to engulf everything around them.

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The next thing the two patrol officers knew, they were back on their cruiser, with the computer's alarm blaring at them.

"Okaay..." Rallen started, "Please tell me that you know what just happened. Why are we back on the ship?"

Jeena thought for a moment and sighed, "I wish I knew, but I don't." She looked over the computer's monitors after shutting off the alarm, "That's odd… It's the same Krawl signature as before. But we already answered the alert. Why are we getting it again?"

She leaned on the wall in silence, staring at the clock absentmindedly, trying to make sense of what happened.

The quiet, however, was making Rallen nervous. "Eh, we'll figure it all out later. Let's just kick some Krawl butt first!" He thrust his fist into the air and walked out. "Iku ze!"

Jeena shook her head. 'How is he always so eager? Especially after whatever just happened?' She thought for half a moment more, just before shaking it off to follow her red-haired partner before he got himself into trouble.

The trip was rather quiet this time, both of them wondering about what just happened. After a few minutes, they had started to pass the ruins again. When they got closer, the same Krawl as before appeared around them.

"Aw! C'mon!" Whined Rallen. "You guys again?" They brought out their weapons and Spectrobes. Rallen noticed he still had his axe weapon equipped. He also remembered that it wasn't a very good weapon against these Krawl, so he promptly started to swap weapons once more.

This was followed by everything freezing in place and being swallowed by the light again.

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The heroes once more found themselves in their patrol cruiser. Rallen stood in his place, scratching his head, dumbfounded, while Jeena promptly shut off the alarm again, figuring it was the same alert as before. As she leaned on the wall again, she noticed that something else was odd, besides the obvious.

"Rallen, look at the clock."

He did as she said. "What about it?"

"Look at the time on it." She pointed out. "It's the same time as when we first got the alert."

He looked again, and his eyes widened in surprise when he saw that she was right. "Sooo, we keep getting...reset to this time or something?"

Jeena nodded. "Seems like it. I wish I knew what keeps causing it."

"Well..." He started. "it happened both time I switched weapons... but why would that cause these resets?"

"I don't know," Jeena sighed. Now her head was starting to hurt from it all. "but maybe...maybe we should try to keep from swapping out weapons. See what happens." Her partner nodded in reply, though they both knew sticking with one weapon would be a lot harder than it sounded.

They passed the ruins for the third time, defeating the Krawl there without switching weapons, and without time resetting, and passed on into the village. They were told Kotetsu was in charge of the village while Radese was in the large city on the planet, and that huge Krawl had started appearing nearby. Jeena thought that Kotetsu might have the answers, but those thoughts were dashed when she noticed that no one in the village other than themselves seemed to be affected by the time resets.

Kotetsu became ecstatic when he saw the two NPP officers coming around the corner. "Thank goodness you two showed up!" He yelled.

"Kotetsu! What's going on here?" asked Jeena.

"Tongs and tadpoles!" Kotetsu shouted. Rallen had to keep himself from laughing. "It's those despicable Krawl again! Back to torment us one more time! There's been sightings of huge, powerful Krawl!"

"Where are they?" The red-haired officer asked.

"I've heard that they're gathering around the bridge and Grasslands." Kotetsu informed them. "As we speak!"

"Alright then!" Rallen enthused. "Let's stop them before it's too late!"

Jeena nodded in agreement. "I'm with you Rallen. Iku ze!"

They were about to go through the gates when Jeena suggested that she check up on the Spectrobes in the Cosmolink to make sure they were at full strength. She was almost done and was closing the Cosmolink's menu when time reset around them for a third time.

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"Ugh," Jeena groaned, "again?" She shut off the loud alarm, nearly slamming her hand on the button this time. Cursing at it under her breath.

Unlike her, however, her partner preferred swearing out loud. "Dammit! So this is gonna happen anytime we even use the Cosmolink's menus?"

"Seems like it," She shook her head, "but I don't see how we can go through this without using it." She pondered to herself.

While she was thinking about this, Rallen, fed up with it all, decided to do the only thing that seemed sensible to him at the time. He stuck his middle finger out towards the ceiling of the cruiser, to whatever higher being might be watching and causing this.

Coincidentally, this was promptly followed by a total blackout.

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"Um, ookaaay…" A girl sat there, blinking at a TV screen. "That is the last time I ever play video games when I'm this tired. I swear Rallen just flipped me the bird…" The girl quickly removed a CD from the game console and put it away before going to bed, and before things got even weirder.

AN: A good bit of the dialogue was taken from the game, but changed up a bit so it sounded better to me. And yeah, the girl at the end is supposed to me. PX

crontructive criticism and reviews are welcome. Flame if you must, but I'll just ignore those.