Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there laid a magnificent kingdom called Lacheipsatis. Its king and its queen were highly devoted to their people, and always did their best to ensure their happiness. It was easy for these two benevolent rulers to dispense aid, since they had been blessed with magical powers. If a famine was to strike the kingdom, the king would make the plants bloom again. If a jealous neighboring kingdom sent its soldiers to destroy Lacheipsatis, the king would send fire, ice, and lightning to push the intruders away. The queen could warn her people if any of these things were to happen, because she often dreamt of the future. The majority of her dreams were rather mundane, such as what the weather would be like tomorrow, or where she'd find that bracelet she'd misplaced a week ago. However, sometimes she would dream about an earthquake or a siege, and she would warn her husband so that he could cushion the blow of the danger, or even prevent it. With the king and the queen using their powers together, Lacheipsatis flourished.
One fateful night, the queen dreamt a terrifying dream. She saw countless worlds with beautiful surroundings, exotic creatures, and wonderful inventions that she could never have imagined. As she was marveling over these new worlds, she began to see small, black, ominous monsters appear throughout them. They terrorized all the people in these worlds, and when the people fell, they turned into new copies of these dark monsters. More and more of them popped up, but they became larger, more frightening, and more destructive. The queen could not bear these images anymore, and forced herself to wake up.
The queen told the king all that she had dreamt. The king was shocked by what he was hearing, but he knew better than to assure his wife that she had only experienced a nightmare. He wanted to prevent these monsters from ever harming anyone, but had no idea how to go about doing this. He decided that he would not trouble any of his subjects' minds with these premonitions, and would not make a move until the queen had any subsequent dreams that could tell him what needed to be done.
Sure enough, the queen had a similar dream the following night. She continued to see worlds being swallowed by the darkness, but this time she saw a flash of light engulf one of the worlds, and the monsters disappeared. The light had come from a massive, shimmering key, wielded by a young boy. He was accompanied by a few others, but it was clear that he was the one responsible for permanently expelling the monsters. The queen informed the king of this development, and the king was relieved to know that there was a way to destroy these monsters, but he still didn't know how to find the boy. The king decided that he would send emissaries to foreign worlds in search of this key, and by extension, the boy.
While the king waited expectantly to hear back from his men, the queen continued to have premonitions. These new ones were not as frightening, though, because they depicted worlds in which some brave individuals were actually managing to keep the monsters at bay. Each night, she dreamt about a new world, and new people in them. She would see how these people lived before the monsters came, how they attempted to deal with them once they arrived, and if they were lucky, what happened when the boy with the key came. These stories were not just informative, but entertaining, and so the queen began writing them down.
The king's emissaries returned to Lacheipsatis after several long months, but none of them could find the key. They did, however, have many fascinating tales to tell their rulers. One emissary told of a faraway land where people had recently developed an ingenious method to tell stories. The stories were acted out, as they were sometimes in Lachiepsatis, but they were then recorded with a peculiar machine, and could be played back whenever people desired them. The only setback was that these machines could not record sounds, and that the pictures could only be shown in black and white. The queen remarked that in some of the worlds she had dreamt about, she had heard of these machines, but that they could play sounds and show colored pictures, and sometimes the pictures would seem to pop off the screens they were shown on.
Suddenly, the queen hatched a brilliant idea. When she had seen the boy and his companions in her dreams, she had noticed that when they were thrust into some of the strangest situations, some of the fighters did not seem too surprised. She had always assumed that the heroes had merely seen too many peculiar things to be perturbed, but it occurred to her that maybe the heroes had seen those specific scenarios before. The queen suggested that she give the dreams she had written about to the emissaries and send them back to the world with the storytelling machines to tell people about the dreams. The denizens of this world who were responsible for creating these recordable stories would hopefully take the dreams and tell them to the rest of the world. That way, the boy with the key would hear about what he was to face, and prepare himself.
There was still one problem; what if the boy was not from that world? One of the royal advisors promised that when the queen's premonitions told her that all she had dreamt was about to happen, he would personally voyage to the world with the storytelling machines, find someone who had been exposed to the stories and had a strong heart, and direct him or her to the boy with the key. The king sanctioned this endeavor, and sent his emissaries back to the world with the storytelling machines. The queen began dreaming about new worlds and new situations with less and less frequency, but whenever she did, the king would send his emissaries back to deliver the stories.
The emissaries tried to form alliances with the people who created the recorded stories, which were called "movies", but they were having enough trouble adjusting to the new world, which was called "Earth". After years had passed, some of the emissaries had managed to befriend some moviemakers who were enthralled by the stories they told, and were all too happy to turn these stories into movies.
Although the emissaries tried to spread the dreams amongst many different groups of people in many different countries, they became particularly fond of one man, and tended to visit him often. This man had built up a movie production studio in a large city called "Los Angeles". He liked making movies that were comprised of many drawings that looked like they were moving, which were called "cartoons". He had been working on a cartoon series about a character that his partner had created, a rabbit who acted like a human, but the man and the company that owned his studio had a fight, so the man wasn't allowed to draw stories about the rabbit anymore, and he needed a new character. Some of the emissaries from Lacheipsatis took pity on him and gave him one of their most important stories. It was about a king who, like the man's previous character, was an animal who acted like a human. However, while the previous character was a rabbit, this king was a mouse.
The man was extremely grateful, and decided to use the mouse, but he decided that he would make him average instead of a king. He also used the mouse's friends, a duck and a dog, and his queen, another mouse. These characters became extremely popular, and the studio became famous. As time went on, the man used more and more stories that the emissaries gave him. Even after his death, his studio continued to be extremely popular, and although the people who worked there invented many stories of their own, they still used some of the queen of Lacheipsatis' premonitions.
The queen continued to have dreams about other worlds until she was very old. Her last dream told her that it was time for her advisor to go to Earth and put some final plans into motion. When she awoke, she told the king and the advisor about what she had dreamt. She told her advisor to pull some strings, and have two of the major companies that were given her stories join forces to ensure that the person they were looking for would be prepared. One of the companies was the one that had been started by the man in Los Angeles many years ago, and the other was a slightly newer company that had been founded on the other side of Earth, in a country called "Japan". This latter company didn't make movies; instead, it made interactive stories called "video games". The queen suggested that these two companies combine their stories with the most crucial premonitions, which she had refused to send to Earth until now, and create one of these video games, hoping that the person the advisor was supposed to find would play this game.
The queen also described the person she had seen, so that if would be easier for the advisor to find him or her. The advisor was surprised to learn that he person he was looking for was only a young girl. He protested this turn of events, but the queen mollified him by pointing out that the hero of her dreams was only a young boy. The queen's dream also said that the girl had not even been born yet, so the advisor's only job at the moment was to get the two companies on Earth to make the video game; preparations for it could take years and years. As time went on and the girl grew older, the advisor would then go to find her.
The advisor was very old, and might not have had enough time to spend years making preparations on Earth, so the queen used the remainder of her power to extend her advisor's lifespan. She passed away less than an hour afterward, and the kingdom of Lacheipsatis mourned, but those who lived there were happy to know that their queen had passed away in her sleep, a death that they saw as fitting for her.
The advisor dutifully went to Earth, and set his late queen's plans into motion. The two companies, still thankful for the stories that Lacheipsatis had given them for ages but unknowing of their significance, worked to create the video game. In order for it to give out the most information to the girl sought by the advisor, it was envisioned as a series of games, instead of just one. After several more years, the first game was released, and the advisor located the girl. He did not tell her of her destiny, not wanting to worry either her or her family, but did prepare her by giving her a copy of the game.
The game was called Kingdom Hearts.
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Hai thar and welcome to Nothing's Like Before. Some of you may have just stumbled upon this story, and if so, thanks for not just stumbling over it. To avoid confusion, I should mention to all of you that this story is a rewrite of a series called The Cheat Code. I originally wrote The Cheat Code between 4 and 5 years ago, and wrote 2 sequels as well, but many parts of the story began to irritate me, so I decided to write it all over again. Don't worry, you can read Nothing's Like Before without having read The Cheat Code. This is a total clean slate.
If you're here because you were a fan of The Cheat Code, thanks for sticking with me. Sorry if the title change caused any confusion, but I wanted to differentiate the series, and as you may have noticed, there's no cheat code anymore. I picked Nothing's Like Before because it kinda fits with the story's theme, and it's a line from "Simple and Clean". Tee-hee. You guys shouldn't worry either; this story will still have most of the same characters and the same nerdy humor. It's just got better worlds and better writing now.
Unfortunately, NLB won't be updated very frequently. I'm crazy busy with schoolwork, and this prologue alone took me about 3 hours to write. I'll try to do a new chapter every other month, maybe once a month if we're all real lucky, but I can't promise anything faster than that. Sorry. But I plan to make the waits worth it. Thanks again for reading, and I hope you keep reading. FG out, yo!