Chapter 1: Summoned

In a vast near empty expanse known to many as the Null Void, filled with the floating masses of crumbling rock, ran a figure, or rather a beast. It's fur was a light shade of blue, once streaked and splotched with near-white, the creature was now covered in dust and dried blood, both its own and that of its pursuers.

The creature stumbled slightly as it barely dodged the whip end of a long tentacle, the limb sending up a smattering of dirt and dust as it struck the ground were the dog-like beast had been moments before.

Both the hunter and the hunted were 'blind', neither bore eyes anywhere on their bodies, having evolved to 'see' the world around them through heat and motion, and so neither were hampered by the dim red lighting found everywhere in the Null Void.

The Hunted, a young Vulpermancer, swore in its head as it propelled itself of the edge of a large rock, throwing itself out in the direction of another, smaller rock its echolocation had picked up moments before. For a moment, it thought it had miscalculated the distance of the jump, then its front legs, comparable to that of a gorilla's and grossly over-proportioned in comparison to its back, hit the rock and automatically closed over the edge, its claws scrabbling and scraping against the surface before finding purchase.

The Vulpermancer pulled itself up onto the rock and jumped, easily reaching a long narrow rock, the series of actions taking less than a few seconds, but even that was too long when running, or rather, leaping, from a flying Hunter.

The Null Guardian, a grey mass of powerful tentacles with long bat-like wings and a large gaping mouth, the only known native to the pocket dimension, struck out at its prey again, this time scoring a hit and ripping through fur and flesh down the Vulpermancer's left side, brushing against a rib or two.

The Vulpermancer let out a roar of pain as it stumbled, a front paw automatically reaching up to the bleeding wound, far worse than any of the other wounds it had received in the past two months.

"My slave who lives somewhere in the universe!"

"Oh sacred, beautiful and strong familiar spirit!"

"I desire and here I plead from my heart!"

"Answer to my guidance!"

BOOOOM!

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière stood in front of a crater which had only moments ago been a patch of grass in one of the four courts of Tristain Academy of Magic, a stunned expression adorning her face as she stared at the spot her familiar should have been standing, instead... nothing, Louise had once again failed to properly cast any spell, only gaining yet another explosion, although this one had definitely been bigger than normal, digging a huge hole into the ground and spraying clumps of dirt and grass in every direction, including all over the watching second year students.

Silence rained for a few seconds as the brains of the students figured out what they were seeing before them, then the silence was broken by the laughter of said students, starting as a slight chuckle before breaking out into roaring laughter.

"Look! The Zero can't even summon a Familiar!"

"She's hopeless!"

"Poor little Louise, such a failure, I just guess you'll always be a Zero"

At this last comment, directed by Louise's long-time rival Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst, the small, pink haired girl spun around, absolutely livid.

"Shut up Zerbst, no one was talking to you!"

Turning to the only adult and the only other person not laughing at her in the court, Louise clasped her hands together and stared up at the robed figure.

"Can I please try again Professor Colbert? I can do it, just give me a chance!"

"I don't know... this has never happened before... the summoning ritual is sacred... one more try miss Vallière, and try to get it right this time"

Louise nodded eagerly before walking over to a fresh patch of grass, taking a deep breath; she lifted her wand up and began to chant. It was immediately obvious that something was different this time, as the spell came out different this time.

"I call to my companion far beyond this universe"

"Oh powerful, lost and cunning being"

"I implore from the depths of my heart"

"Heed my call, and answer to my guidance"

"Appear!"

If her first spell had been original, then this one was unique, no one had ever heard anything like it 'Beyond the universe?' What could exist beyond the universe? The entire second year student body watched and waited for yet another explosion, and waited.

The explosion never came, in fact it looked as though the spell had failed worse than normal as the gathered realised that for the first time, nothing was happening.

Louise sunk to the ground in defeat. She had once again failed to cast magic, Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, for the first time in her life, gave up.

Kirche felt something tugging at her arm and turned to find her best friend Tabitha staring at Louise.

"What is it Tabitha?"

Her answer, like everything she said was quiet and short.

"Summon" the blue haired girl pointed, and Kirche realised that Tabitha wasn't looking at Louise, but past her, at a point about a metre in the air a short distance in front of the Zero. The busty Germanian's eyes widened as she saw what was forming there. A small red circle, about the size of an olive was suspended in mid-air and as she watched, it slowly began to grow.

By the time it was big enough for anyone else to actually notice, most of the students had already left, already heading back inside. In fact the only ones left to witness the arrival of Louise's summoning were the two girls, Colbert, a stunned Louise and Montmorency who had benn about to step back into the Water tower.

While the wound wasn't fatal, it was excruciatingly painful and making it incredibly hard to walk, let alone continue to run and the Vulpermancer was finding difficult to think properly. Instead it hobbled onwards, barely aware of the Hunter behind it, leisurely floating down for the easy capture. Perhaps Master would give it extra treat for bringing in Prey alive so fast? The Null Guardian hoped so.

A green oval appeared hovering just off the ground; the portal gave off no heat or cold, had no mass and made no movement. It was, however, visible to the naked eye, but neither of the beings before it could sense the portal in anyway.

The first either knew of its existence was when the Guardians Prey suddenly vanished from right in front of it, and the Vulpermancer when its senses suddenly went from 'big empty blank space all around' and 'minimal gravity to pull smaller rocks towards bigger rocks' to 'unknown length of flat ground rising up on opposite sides at straight (up) angle with multiple humanoid forms' and 'strong gravity pulling (down)'.

But not much of this thought process actually managed to make its way through the beings pain addled mind before it hit the ground, hard.

Louise stared in shock as the swirling red circle formed a short distance from her. It had worked, she had actually summoned something. Well, was summoning something, but that wasn't what was important, Louise, the girl who despite coming from one of the strongest noble blood lines in Tristain had never been able to cast a single spell in her life, who had never produced anything more than explosions, had managed to summon a familiar. She pulled herself off the ground and watched the strange portal grow, willing it to go faster.

Her elation turned to confusion as a large blue mass slipped through the portal and promptly dropped the few inches to the ground with a heavy 'thud'.

The slip of a girl edged cautiously towards the creature, slowly starting to panic as she realised that it wasn't moving. "Professor Colbert! I think its hurt" she shouted, running to the creature's side. The teacher not far behind her.

Louise flung herself down at her familiar's side, resting her hand in the blue fur, yes whatever her familiar was; it was covered in a thick layer of shaggy light blue fur. In all the research he had done in preparation for the summoning, she had never even heard mention of such a beast. It was safe to say she had no idea what she had summoned.

Shifting around she found her familiar's head, its eyes seemingly closed and invisible in the fur, the only way to tell the head apart from the rest of the shaggy mound were the teeth that poked out from between black lips and the slowly opening and closing gills adorning its neck, a black collar sitting just above the slits, was her future familiar already someone's pet?

The problem was easy to see, dark red stained the fur behind its front leg, her familiar was bleeding heavily and, she realised, not breathing.

Colbert dropped down beside her, examining the wound before turning around to the watching teens.

"Montmorency, your assistance?"

Said blond set her frog on her shoulder and raced over, peering at the damage. "I-I'm not sure I can heal such a large injury professor, I'm only a dot of water and I mainly deal with potions, not healing magic and this isn't a human, I'm not sure I can do it."

"Just do your best Miss Montmorency"

"Professor! My familiar's not breathing, it has gills! I think it might be suffocating!" Louise was panicking by this point, the first spell she had ever done right and it was dying right in front of her. The night before she had claimed to Zerbst that her familiar would be better than anything the Germanian could summon. There was a possibility that this creature was better than a fire salamander, even if they were rare. She couldn't let it die, not now that she was so close.

Suddenly the Vulpermancer let out a shuddering breath, then another, its breathing slowly turning to near normal. It lifted its head to look up at Louise, although it didn't open its eyes and the pinkette wondered if it even had any.

"Louise, now would be the best time for you to seal the contract."

The small mage nodded and picked up her wand from where it had fallen and placed it on her familiar' forehead, taking a deep breath, she began to chant.

"My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de la Vallière. Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers, bless this humble being, and make it my familiar!"

She then leaned down and kissed the beast on its short snout.

For a few moments nothing happened, and then her familiar curled up, letting out a low long roar of pain. Montmorency doubled her efforts to keep the injury stable.

Then, to the shock of everyone one present, Zero's familiar began to shrink, fur shrivelling up to be replaced with tough black skin, front legs shrinking down to match more appropriately proportioned hind legs, as the not-Vulpermancer reached roughly the same size as Louise its bones began to shift and move, rearranging themselves. Its skull rotated and flattened. A set of eyes appeared and opened, revealing a set of bright blue eyes that peered up at Louise as long black hair sprouted from its head and fell down around its- no, her- shoulders. Last of all the black skin puffed out becoming a long black dress, blood staining the left side.

Louise 'the Zero' had summoned a human.

Louise looked up from the book she was studying; she was sitting in the medical ward of the school, located in the tower of water, below the staff quarters. In the bed next to her lay her familiar, despite its harmless look, Louise had quickly realised it was definitely not human.

After it had transformed, Professor Colbert had had it rushed into the nearby tower, one of the reasons the summoning's were always done in that specific court, as the medical ward was only a few mails away.

The water mages had been surprised when they had discovered the black 'cloth' that covered her familiars body in fact seemed to be a part of it, and had had to work around it. The wound in its side was bad, the weapon that had caused the injury (for what else could have created a wound like that, a dragon?) had gone deep, almost hitting a rib, according to the head healer; it could take days, maybe a week for such a gash to heal.

And of course, word spread fast around the school, some of the students she passed in the halls had mocked her for summoning such a 'worthless commoner' as a familiar, even going so far as to claim she was paying her to pretend to be 'the Zero's' familiar. Louise had ignored the jibes, seeking the peace and quiet of the water tower.

Louise gazed at her familiar's peaceful face, it was hard to believe that the creature wasn't a peasant-or a noble- but something entirely different and strange. She had never seen an animal like that anywhere in Halkeginia, and although she had searched right through the relevant sections of the library, there had been no mention of such a creature. Perhaps it was native to a land far to the east?

A soft groan pulled her out of Louise out of her thoughts. Her familiar was waking up, and it looked extremely angry.

The first thing the wielder of the Omnimatirx felt was a comfortable surface beneath her and a dull pain in her side. Although the way a Vulpermancer's mind worked was incredibly different and confusing due to the lack of sight, she remembered running, the screeches of the Null Guardian and its tentacle slashing down her flank, the ground suddenly vanishing beneath her paws, then nothing. Whatever had happened after was beyond her reach.

But where she was now? That much was obvious, someone wanted her alive, and it wasn't that hard to figure out why. She had to get out of here, wherever here was.

She tried to quietly pull herself out from under the warm blankets over her, key-word; tried, the attempt to move sent stabbing pain through her side and a groan of pain escaped between her lips. Shit.

She rolled off the bed, flinging the blankets aside and leapt to her feet, ignoring the small figure sitting next to her bed (although the bright pink hair drew her eye for a second) she ran from the small room and down out of the medical ward.

Not knowing her way around the tower, the black haired girl took a wrong turn and ended up in one of the connecting sections of the massive academy, joining the water tower with the centre tower. These areas were mainly used for classrooms, excepting the more specialised classrooms which were situated at the top of the towers.

As she ran down the corridors, she would peek into rooms as she passed, slowing down to get a good look. What she saw greatly surprised her; the rooms looked like classrooms, which was basically the last thing she had expected, although she had never set foot in a classroom in her life, been home-schooled since the age of three, she had seen school on TV from time to time and the rooms reminded her of some of the rooms she had seen on the screen, but more old fashioned and rich. Was that real wood? Such a thing was rare as sunlight in the Null Void, how could anyone, no matter how powerful, have access to so much?

The faint sound of shouting forced her to speed up as she made her bid for freedom. All she needed to do was find a place open to endless red space and she could escape free.

Voices ahead slowed her run, the owners were standing in the entrance into one of the rooms, standing rather close to each other. The shape-shifter crouched down in the shadows, waiting for them to go on their way. Her eyes widened as she got her first good look at the beings who were holding her. In the dim lighting they looked surprisingly human, in fact as far as she could tell, they were human! But what are humans doing in the Null Void? For the first time, she began to question whether or not she was even in the Null Void anymore.

After a few moments the translator in the Omnimatrix began to translate the unrecognisable garble into simple English. However their words may as well be in a foreign language for all the sense thay made. The guy- a blonde haired boy in an opened ruffled shirt that just screamed 'idiotic playboy'-was in the process of trying to woo a brown haired girl who was distinctly younger than him, it wouldn't surprise her if he was seeing multiple girls at once. But it's not like I can complain, after all I can transform into a bunch of aliens and go around saving people.

She snorted in amusement, accidently alerting the human teens to her presence.

"Who's there? Show yourself!" The boy shouted out, obviously trying to impress the younger girl behind him and, if she looked closely, she would see it was working.

"Oh Guiche…" Yep, definitely working.

The young alien jumped up from the shadows, her cover well and truly blown, and raced past them down dimly lit hall. Somewhere behind her she could hear voices as her pursuers caught up to the couple, a distinctively female voice demanding to know which way her… familiar? Went. They were catching up, the girl realised in a panic, speeding up down the hall.

There! She raced through a door at the end of a hall to see another, much larger and heavier door set into the slightly curved wall. She threw herself at the door, using her full weight to force the door open.

Stumbling down a short flight of steps, she reached over to her right arm to activate the device located on her wrist and transform… when she got a good look at the sky over her head and froze in shock. Instead of the normal dim red swirliness and floating rock that usually filled the background in the Null Void, her vision was filled with a mass of twinkling bright lights and two moons, one red and the other blue, both a lot bigger in the sky then Earth's small white moon had ever been. After so long in a bleak and mostly empty pocket dimension, the night sky was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen… had it always been this bright?

The young shape-shifter was pulled out of her thoughts as she was suddenly jerked up into the air, hovering about a metre off the ground. With an ease created by long hours spent flying under her own power, she spun in mid-air to look at her kidna- no, saviours for the first time.

Below her stood two figures, one was the boy she had just run past, the other a small girl who she recognised as the being who had been sitting next to the bed she had awoken in, the bright pink hair was an instant giveaway and she briefly wondered if the girl was a Halfbreed.

"You," she pointed at pink-hair "are you then one brought me here? What planet is this?"

"Planet? This is the Tristain Academy of Magic, you're in Tristania"

The Omnimatrix user shook her head, not recognising the name of the planet. But then a quick look into the sky proved she didn't recognise any of the stars in the sky, there was no doubt about it, she might be out of the Null Void, but she was far from home, very far.

She turned back to the teens, focusing on the girl and causing her to squirm slightly under her gaze. "So, if I may ask, who brought me here?"

Louise pulled herself back up to her full height, admonishing herself for cowering under her familiars gaze, she was a Vallière for goodness sakes! "I did familiar" then as an afterthought "how dare you talk back to me peasant!" As soon as the last word left her mouth, she regrated her words, the creature floating in the air before her was certainly no peasant, just by looking into its eyes, you could see something… animalistic in those grey orbs.

To her surprise the being made no move to correct her, instead it twisted into a standing position (a hard feat to pull off when floating in mid-air) and bowed (an even harder feat to pull off and so it looked rather awkward).

"Then you have my gratitude, master, for saving me from that hell hole of a dimension and from a fate possibly worse than death" turning to Guiche she motioned to him to let her down "if you could let me down? I promise I will not try to run again, I have no reason to do so."

Looking suspiciously as the black clad figure it front of him he turned to Louise "let it down." With a wave of his wand Guiche cancelled the levitation spell and turned away to go look for Katie.

"Well what are you waiting for familiar?" Louise demanded when she noticed her familiar still standing there, gazing up into the night sky, it had been a long day and she just wanted to go to bed.

Her familiar turned its head to look at her and smiled "coming master! Oh, and my name's not 'familiar', it's Alyssa Morrow".

IMPORTANT NOTE

A few things I think I may need to point out before I continue. Obviously this fanfiction has an original character as one of the most important characters in the story, I know a lot of people out there hate original characters in such high roles in stories, myself included, but I have a very good reason for doing this! This is a crossover I've wanted to do for a long time now but I also wanted something different from the canon Familiar of Zero while still bringing the Omnitrix into the whole thing. Using Ben would have made it just too similar to that. I guess in hindsight I could have used Gwen instead but I get a feeling that wouldn't have worked. My solution was a character I built for an entirely different fic I'm working on and I will be using the background story from that in here as well (which will be told bit by bit later).

Also near the end I mentioned something called a halfbreed. This is my name for a hybrid of two sapient species (like Helena and Manny from Ben 10: Alien Force) although that might be obvious.

Final thing, updates will be slow and sporadic as reading often takes preference over writing. Comments highly wanted! I need to know what's wrong and what I'm doing right, if you have any ideas plot wise then tell me as I haven't really thought past what I'm going to do once I've passed the canon plotline (although I won't be following it very closely anyway).

-EclipseSeeker