The following story has some similar themes to Captain Buzz Lightyear's stories, but I have his permission to use them. Also he has helped me with the details of this writing. Thanks to EMZ/Empress and Mira Elizabeth for help, too.
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command © Disney/Pixar
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Episode 3:
The Emperor Strikes Back
It was a very lazy day in space. Team Lightyear was on a patrol somewhere beyond the edges of Karn System and had literally nothing to do. It had been actually Commander Nebula's idea to order the team in such lousy jobs, according to him Buzz Lightyear was so stressed out that he needed some rest. But because the famous ranger always resisted for taking holidays -he wanted to be on the spot when duty called- this was then the authority's solution to give him some rest. Yet, Buzz did not feel any more relaxed, here he was mainly bored. Playing a holo-game of Super-Hyper-Multi-Mario was his most interesting topic of the day. Mira sat in the co-pilot of 42 and knitted a pink sock. Booster read the Space Ranger Holo-Manual, as always, although he after all these years knew it by letter.
"Hey, guys... I just found something interesting while surfing in the Citizen Security Database of the Galactic Alliance..." XR shouted from his corner where he tinkered with the computer.
"Don't you have anything better to do, XR? Guess you're again browsing there to find pretty ladies?" Buzz sighed annoyed from his chair.
"Well, okayday, I like to check out whether there's free tootsies! Might even work in Star Command HQ! But I found som'thing about one of our ol' pals!"
Mira and Buzz lazily scrambled up from their chairs. "Now it's better not to be about the café waitress you keep ogling..." Mira commented. Also Booster set himself behind XR to see what was so interesting.
"Don't you folks remember this damsel in distress? Didn't we use to save her quite a lot?" the robot pointed at the screen. A personal file of a woman in mid-twenties was his interest.
"That's Miss G'Deneb! The Engineer that invented that landanah energy supply!" Booster noted.
A sparkle ignited in XR's eyes. "Still a Miss... hmm..."
"Now you cut it out, blast, she's flesh and blood!" Buzz snorted and read the lines of the data screen. "She's not working for Star Command any longer. That's why we haven't seen her in ages. Look, she's got her own enterprise, 'Choice Landanah Inc.'"
"Making big mo with her energy, huh?"
In the screen could be read:
Choi Zarah G'Deneb
*****
Status: single
Age: 26
Home Location: Gamma Quadrant Sector 4, Capital Planet
...
...
"Seems to be the same miss as then... hey, what's the problem with the computer?" Mira suddenly interjected. The whole machine flickered, as it was to lose the connection to the database.
"A piece of asteroid!" XR hummed and attached a cable cord from his own circuits to the main computer. "I'll fix the error in a picosecond! Hmm... need to pass a couple of security codes... ok, no problemo, fast going... I caught a couple of passwords from the bin... connect... one, two, three, snap!"
The screen began to flood lists of numbers and matrix.
"XR, what did you do?" Buzz was now rather serious.
"Um... I'll fix it a bit more... now I passed a couple of other security levels... should be back... now! Yodeleiihoo!"
A black image appeared on the screen with a strange text 'The Alliance Secondary Security Database'.
"What is this, this is not where we were..." Mira shook his head. Soon the image changed back to a personnel file of Zarah. But, there was something quite odd in it.
"See, I got it back..." XR started, but his mouth dropped open just like the other rangers' ones. In the data cell cold, black lines narrated beside a serious-looking face picture of the woman:
UNDER THE SPECIAL PROTECTION AND CONTROL OF THE GALACTIC ALLIANCE
*****
Choi Zarah Darkmatter
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF CHOICE LANDANAH INC.
EYES ONLY-FILES: FOR AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY
Status: married
Age: 26
Home location: unknown
...
...
...
After gaping the text half a minute, all of them interjected in unison: "DARKMATTER?"
"XR, WHAT did you do? This must be some kind of mistake... Did you infect the database with a virus?" Mira yelled to the nervous robot.
"No... this is not a mistake, you hacked into some kind of intranet that even we rangers are not allowed to log in." Buzz gravely inspected the screen. "You have done a sort of a security crime, ranger XR... but... how can this be..." he shook lightly his head, screwing up his eyes to get some sense to the changed surname.
"Does that mean that..." Booster whined terrified.
"How many Darkmatters do we know around here?" Mira pointed out.
"It can't be the same one we know... isn't he supposed to be... dead?" Booster added.
Buzz pressed his forehead with his fingers and deliberated. "We all have thought that Warp Darkmatter is dead. Maybe he is not. No one has heard anything about him since the formal amnesty. Well, then it was announced that he was dead... still, who knows. But... don't you rangers remember WHY he was given this decision to pardon? He saved this particular woman."
"Makes sense why this would be top secret information." Mira nodded.
"And the file here says she's married. It would be telling us she's a widow if she was."
"So... is she... married to Warp Darkmatter?" Booster stammered.
"With 99% probability. I believe there was something really serious going on between them when we were involved in the case of that alleged kidnap, then, when Zurg was also after my ex-partner."
"Um... why does it say that her home location is unknown?" Booster wondered.
"It doesn't really make sense..." Buzz wrinkled his brows. "Unless... there must be a place where Warp lives if he truly is alive. Maybe this refers... to it."
"Okey-dokey, what's so secret that even a top-secret file won't tell it to ya?" XR muttered.
Buzz did not pay attention any more the comments of the rest of the rangers. He gradually descended into his own world of ideas. "Warp Darkmatter... alive? How can that be...? Twice dead, twice came to life again, only in different connections..."
It was XR who finally got Buzz back to the reality. He waved long his metal fingers in front of his gaze and lastly threw a stinky sock from his inners under his nose. Everyone knows the strange additions the robot got after being rebuilt by the LGM, after the memorable blow-up.
Well, for Buzz it was not a pleasant way to awaken from the middle of his deep reflexions.
"Craters! Put that thing away!" he yelled.
"Cool down, cap. It was the only way to get ya outta your hallucinations. Was it Ozma you were dreaming about?" XR smiled a wide and a cunning grin.
"No, you silly hunk of metal. I was thinking... well... it's not that important", Buzz sighed and changed the discussion topic to something else.
After some hours, the workday was over. Commander had given new orders for 42, to return to Star Command HQ and let the rangers go home. No one referred to the security hack with a single syllable. It was now a quiet agreement that this puny mistake was kept as an inside information of Team Lightyear.
At home, on Capital Planet, Buzz sat in front of the holo-telly and flipped the channels. One was left open and the airing quiz competition went on.
"The question is: King Nova is the ruler of which planet of the Galactic Alliance? For the correct answer, you can win one hundred thousand uni-bucks! All clap! Yippee! And, here are the alternatives: first: Capital Planet? Second: Rhizomia? Third: Mars? Fourth: Vorlon? Fifth..."
"Aw, blast! No better amusement for a boring night?" Buzz cursed and then blundered in the middle of and classic movie.
"---use the Force, Luke---"
Snap. The Captain shut down the holo and sighed. "I've seen that film a million times... guess I better go to the kitchen and make a fast supper..." For a second he ceased the time to inspect the scale models of star cruisers squatting in his shelving. Star Command... his life, sacrifice and career...
In the kitchen, he took some sandwich-making implement out of the freezer, but soon got buried into his thoughts as he sat there at his table. The tea in his cup gradually chilled to lukewarm dishwashing water. Buzz did nothing but stared in front of himself, leaning his elbows to the table. The house was completely silent, so there was nothing to interrupt him from his hypnosis.
The only thought he had in mind, was the name of Warp Darkmatter. A man, that he had once called his partner and best friend. A man that he had trained side by side with him. He had turned to the dark side and become dead to him years ago. On the other hand, so he had thought, him to be eternally dead to the goodness. The dear friend he had one day had, had transformed to a monster called Agent Z, the henchman of the most evil megalomaniac of the universe. Zurg. Was that this man named Darkmatter, was it that his heart had always been nothing but cynic and selfish? No. Once there had been the young man, ready to blast off to Star Command, ready to defend the good. At what point had there been the temptation to offer a life to the dark forces? Buzz did not know that.
But... seven months ago there had been a sudden and unexpected resurrection from the black abysses of evilness. A shooting star to the light that had ended up to a tragedy. Or had it? In the glowing lamp of the newest information, Warp was alive. But... how? And where? How was that on the whole possible? He was renounced to dead, and should have now been literally a corpse in a graveyard. However, the cosmos was full of mysteries. A name like Darkmatter was not a common name around; lastly there would be a second one of that family living in Capital Planet. In addition, what was it with the walking riddle Choi Zarah G'Deneb... or was she Darkmatter? She was assumingly living some kind of a double life, had this enterprise and her apartment on this planet as a coulisse. Behind it, in the unknown, she existed as a person someone else. In the scene of the court, when the formal amnesty of Warp was announced, she had been a lachrymose and pale shadow. No doubt that she loved him... who had changed completely his life because of her. Warp Darkmatter... where was he? How was he? What kind of man was he now? It was hard for Buzz to comprehend the change the emotionally indifferent man could have gone through. If it ever was that G'Deneb's mate really was his former partner, how could that man had ended up living settled life as a married man? That was something too unbelievable. No, how could that Don Juan ever be capable of that? What was Buzz' reminiscent beyond the dusty years, there had never been respect towards women in Warp, even then when he had been a so-called space ranger. Five, even more girls had always been hanging from his arms, he had had nothing but overnight relationships. That had been his hobby, literally. Egoistic man that never had been content with a female, only saw them as objects. Cold, cold-hearted Warp... could he finally had yearned for something more profound instead of soulless gaining of malevolent glory and hedonism?
Buzz stared out of the window glass. It was cool outside; a chill wind skimmed the walls of the penthouses. His eyes turned to watch the stars that twinkled in the velvet vacuum. There he was, somewhere... his old friend, as a reformed man? How could he find out the truth about him?
Lightyear stood up and tapped at the windowsill.
"I have to meet him, in a way or another..." a lonely idea whirled around his mind.
"I have to be sure that he exists... as a man that has left behind the life of a foe... I have to meet him... to see, that could there be good in him." In his deep mind-play, he started to do a second sandwich for himself, feeling subconsciously the snarl his stomach kept in hunger. However, being too much in one's thoughts is not necessarily the best way to build a delicious buttered slice of bread. He succeeded to spread the butter and set a fried pulu-egg (an ostrich-type bird living on a planet called Pulumaa, the eggs are very delicious) on it. But the spices, salt, pepper and oregano, ended up to swim among the tea he had. Next he took impassively the tea cup from the table and slurped a big swallow. What else was followed, but that he was coughing the washy liquid to the tub with a hideous grin on his face.
"Blurbs!" he hackled and took a gulp of fresh water to get the fusty taste away. "Yuck! I'll never drink tea any more! I have to send a complaint letter to the manufacturer, the taste is awful! Craters!"
His previous thought, nonetheless, came back in a breeze. He banged his fist against his chest and declared out loud: "I'm going to find it out!" Then came the reality to face him. How would he do that? It was not even one hundred percent sure that G'Deneb was united with the Darkmatter he had in mind. But who else could that be... so Buzz would have to contact that woman somehow. He had thousands of questions, he needed to know. He needed to know the truth.