Okay, guys, it's been a while… and I honestly need as much help as I can with this project that I'm working on for the time being.
You see, somewhere on the internet, there's this shared fan fiction setting that I joined with the intention of writing some stories in the setting based into a series of stories. One such story that I plan on writing happens to be a crossover with Anima: Beyond Fantasy, with a prequel to that story tying in the different franchises that I plan on using for this series, among other things. One thing that I should mention about this setting now is that it's mainly the Nasuverse when not dealing with crossover material (which is a little bit of the time in comparison to the rest of the stories).
Now, I'd like to post the prologue in its somewhat-fixed entirety here, at least for the process of proof-reading it for mistakes that I might have made with the Anima: Beyond Fantasy characters that I put in this already (among other things). Hopefully I can get some good criticism about this before I try this again in a while.
___
---Suzaku's Problem---
Prologue: Ciel
Heavy winds buffeted the shutters and rattled windows in the Misaki. The storm had started small, with a peaceful drizzle in the afternoon, before the skies opened up and poured a veritable ocean onto the city. Water poured down so hard it created streams that flowed like rivers and flooded several of Misaki's main roads. Compounding this was near typhoon-level winds that toppled the few pedestrians still on the city streets. Most residents wisely heeded the weather broadcaster’s warnings and stayed inside, content to weather the heavy storm from the comfort of their heaters and blankets.
One person, however, was outside the Catholic Church in town, wearing a black nun’s robe and a pair of black combat boots while holding her favored weapons as a Burial Agent, the Black Keys. Her blue hair fell in front of her blue eyes, though it didn't hinder her in the slightest bit, considering that she had training in regards to eyesight impediments from her husband of two years. Nothing else was out of place for her except for the fact that she showed that she was three months pregnant, which normally wouldn't be a problem for her, except for one fact.
Her husband, Shiki Aozaki, was missing.
That paled in comparison to a very extremely unwelcome sight in Misaki City. Seeing this monstrosity was reason enough to remember the events of Nrvnqsr Chaos and what he did to so many innocent people in that hotel. This being was a Dead Apostle of unknown origin, or so she was led to believe, as it was generally impossible to have another dimension travelling being in this world at all.
This particular entity had bluish skin, strange tattoos on its limb joints, hair red as fire, a black tank-top shirt, green shorts, and a strange-looking long sword that practically radiated power on its own. Nobody who laid eyes on it could take their eyes away, as it exuded a certain charm to it that didn't belong anywhere; it was like looking at a God.
It also didn't help that this entity had laid waste to most of the government buildings in the city without people being pissed off at it, even going about killing the people who worked in those buildings, thus making it so that her services were required.
As soon as this Burial Agent, Ciel Aozaki, felt every bit of her power ready for the task of killing this monster, she moved her Black Keys in her hands to the Wolverine position and charged at the being before it seemed ready to react. It was as if she was assured the victory of the battle--
--and all Hell broke loose shortly thereafter.
Swinging the sword in hand to block the Black Keys, the entity traded the swings effortlessly and with great efficiency to its strikes, making Ciel hard-pressed to keep the monster from gaining an upper hand. As each strike came closer and closer to ripping into her, she desperately maneuvered herself to at least protect the child in her womb. No matter what happened, though, there was property damage with each shockwave produced by the swings and blocks.
A swing to the legs caused Ciel to jump up, then allowing her to strike down at the head of the beast, causing a couple minor injuries at least. With the beast injured, it seemed that Ciel knew what to do to this particular—
"Tell me, what is your name, and what is the name of your unborn child?"
—okay, the monster sounds like a man, and now he wanted to know about her name and the name of her child?
Having landed fifteen meters away by that point, Ciel didn’t bother replying right away, opting instead to rush in and attempt to strike the beast while it was heavily distracted.
Keywords there being “attempt to”, as the monster raised his free hand and blocked Ciel’s rush by paralyzing her, or at least preventing her from entering his defensive perimeter.
"I am Omega," the being said ominously, not so much talking to Ciel as simply voicing its thoughts, facing away from her. "I am the end of all existence." Feeling more than seeing Ciel’s eyes widen and her body moving backwards, Omega continued to speak, in a low and sibilant tone, "I only wondered what your name and your unborn child's name were, because you have gotten me remotely interested in what sort of capabilities you humans here have."
Realizing that she could speak, Ciel growled out, "As if I’ll tell you anything! My name and that of my daughter are not for you to know, but my title of Seventh Executioner
is
, you inhuman freak of nature!"
Turning to face Ciel, Omega asked out of curiosity, "Is there some way to know in this world what gender your child will be before she is born? If so, I am most interested, because I have yet to know how that sort of thing works. You could say that I am interested in learning everything I can before destroying exis--"
At this point, Omega felt his danger senses go off the charts, as he turned his attention away from Ciel again to block a knife strike that was targeting him in a jagged line. Unfortunately for him, his long sword was stabbed by the knife shortly thereafter, making it vanish into nothingness. Sensing the need to make a tactical retreat, Omega himself left as well, but not before saying, "I expect to finish this with you later, Seventh Executioner."
As soon as Omega had completely left, Ciel found that she could move again, thus making her look around for the person to have defeated Omega like that. What she found was astonishing.
---
In the Grail Works Limited base at the Emiya House, sometime before this whole mess started…
A young man with black hair, glasses that covered his seemingly steel-gray eyes, a blue school uniform and a knife that looked like it was supposed to be used to cut fruit was sitting across from a girl that looked like she belonged in a grade school, wearing a purple shirt and a white knee-length skirt. These two were named Shiki Tohno and Illyasviel von Einzbern.
Shiki, having recently gotten back from his excursion to retrieve Arc from someone that had kidnapped her by means of a Summoning Ritual, was rather confused by the fact that he was being called for a small mission, considering that he never expected to go out on one at all after the last fiasco regarding missions. Still, he needed to know what he had to do to get this out of the way, so he asked, "Ilya, please, what do you need me to do? I'll make sure it gets taken care of quickly, so let me go out there and prove it, alright?"
Ilya, despite herself, sighed in annoyance and looked at the Agent in her command at the moment. Most of the others were gone, having some other things to take care of for the time being, so that just left her, Shiki, and a few others.
Still, she needed to make this mission quick and easy, so she answered, "It's like this. You need to go to an alternate form of Misaki City and deal with a threat that's most likely going to destroy the area. Success, as determined by the client, will net us a special item that is able to grant the wielder a limited wish. Any questions?"
Shiki, thinking it over for a bit, replied, "Yes, actually, I only have one. Who's the client?"
The sound of someone clearing their throat behind Shiki made he and Ilya look to see a man that had silver hair, golden eyes, copper-colored armor made of something surprisingly durable despite the color and a sword that didn't look practical but had the makings of something practical hanging off his right hip. Before they could ask who he was, he replied to Shiki's question, "I am the client, honorable Lord Tohno. My name is Rah Sith, and I am a man who values the truth above many things." Turning to face Ilya, he asked her, "Is the doorway open to the alternate Misaki for Lord Tohno?"
Shaking her head to get rid of the shock, Ilya answered, "No, not quite yet, but I'll open it shortly. In the meantime, I hope you don't mind some refreshments to keep you going for a bit, because I'm pretty sure it's time for lunch now."
Shaking his head, Rah said, "I'm afraid that I'm unable to eat as I currently am. I don't have a real body that would allow me to digest anything anywhere, due to a tragic incident in my life before coming here, one that I don't feel comfortable talking about just yet."
Seeing that Rah was unwilling to speak more on the subject for now, Ilya decided to move things on over to a different line of discussion, so she asked, "Tell me, how did you find out about the Grail Works?"
Rah opened his mouth to speak, but before any words could be formed, he paused. How
did
he find out about the Grail Works?
--Flashback--
Rah, after having spent seven hundred sixty years in a state of limbo, was suddenly jolted awake with a flood of information. He didn't know what the purpose of learning all this information was, but he knew that it had a purpose, as his inhuman intellect provided several scenarios in which he needed this information. It was something that he knew was not ordinary, he even getting conscious thought was beyond comprehension under the normal circumstances, but he could tell that this wasn't normal.
With a simple thought, he learned more than he had ever dreamed to learn in his original lifetime, and also something very horrifying in his opinion.
What this horrifying thing he learned of was that Imperium, a group of power-hungry humans that thought they were in the best interest of all humanity, had inadvertently dealt a death blow to the world they sought to control when they sealed the entity now known as Omega away in the dimension known as the Tower of End.
"The fools," Rah said more to himself than anyone else. If only he could help stop the being known as Omega….
Suddenly, a final piece of information helped solidify his body back in his old base, the island of Tol Rauko in the Inner Sea. This piece of information was the knowledge that Imperium was controlling access to other dimensions outside of the ones that they had control over, but one group was slowly but surely circumventing said control, this Grail Works Limited. As he thought more on the ramifications this group had inadvertently caused, he realized that this was his one chance of securing freedom away from the Powers in the Shadows, and he didn't know how likely it was that he'd find another such chance of freeing his home world.
With that, he looked around and realized that he had a temporary physical body at least, given that he had erased himself from existence as part of a desperate gamble. He didn't know how temporary his body was, but he intended to get out of this place fast, and he knew just what to do.
Walking to the central portion of the bottom part of his base, where he had arrived at least, he stopped at the central most portion of his base and gave a mental command that would have major ramifications across the multiverse.
'Begin Teleportation.'
By the time the soldiers in the base heard the hum of the machinery, they couldn't do a thing to stop it, as it was too late.
Rah Sith would not be stopped on his way to freeing the multiverse.
--End Flashback--
After a bit of thought, Rah finally answered, "I heard about it somewhere else."
What he wasn't willing to tell them was that he had written the proposal for help after hearing that Omega was in a parallel dimension to their own, making sure to include a reward for when they dealt with the fiend, among other things. It wasn't that he was afraid, mind you; he just needed to be sure that he got his facts straight before making sure they got the reward.
Ilya, after thinking it through, decided upon a course of action. With that, she said, "I suppose you'll tell us about this item first, and then Shiki will leave, right?"
Rah simply nodded, before he pulled out a ring that had many strange inscriptions on it, many of which were glowing with a strange light. Before anyone could ask what was special about the ring, he spoke up and said, "This ring is capable of granting one wish to each person it is worn by for until it gets to fifteen people. The limits of the wish are that it has to be a rather specific wish, one that doesn't involve killing anybody or making life come from nothing, and in the dimension the person is residing in at the current time." Seeing the confused looks on his hosts' faces, he said, "I wished to know the limits of this particular item, and that's why not all the inscriptions are full of the power they deserve, really."
Ilya could see the logic in that, so she nodded and turned to face Shiki, saying to him, "I'll entrust this mission to you. Please take good care of it, Shiki."
"On it," Shiki answered, before he walked over to his shoes and went through a gateway to the alternate version of his town.
---
Back in the present time, over in alternate Misaki
Shiki Tohno, having arrived at the spot where he felt the shockwaves coming from, promptly stared in the direction of one version of his’ senpai to see if she was in any mortal danger. However, seeing her in her Catholic Priest outfit was something that was unsettling him for some reason that he didn’t want to know quite so soon, even though there was a reason for her to wear that outfit. Before long, however, he broke out of his stupor and asked, “Ciel-senpai, are you—?”
That was as far as Shiki could get, given that the woman he strictly knew as Ciel-senpai came rushing at him to perform a bear hug of a tackle and wailed in pure joy, “Shiki! Thank God you’re alive! I was worried sick over you after you had disappeared out of the blue like that!”
___
Note that the underscores seperate the prologue from the rest of the post. I just thought I'd share that info with you guys.
Also, before you ask, I had the idea to make the Ciel in this series based somewhat on a characterization of her that someone else had done for her. As such, I had to make sure that she was married and her husband took his big sister figure's family name, so as to seperate his past from his future (it's complicated).
On another 'before you ask' note, I know that Rah Sith should be Deader Than Dead when he was Killed Off For Real (blame TVTropes for those phrases), but for the purposes of this story he's still alive (but barely)… and he was kept alive via his conciousness still hanging around and given a new body like what Tieria Erde in the movie Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer would do (I'm not sure if that works or if I committed an asspull… oh well).
Could anyone please help me get this worked out properly? I don't want to end up realizing that this was a major mistake on my end (should it turn out that way).