Disclaimer: I do not own God Eater Burst or anything relating to any other franchise. I do, however, own the main character of this story and the concept of the Magnus.

Chapter One

Magnus rule number one: 'Failure is not an option'.

Usually because the consequences of failing anything resulted in nothing but anguish and regrets. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was twelve years old. Since then I've made damned sure that I always I succeeded in whatever job was given to me.

But there were times when you had no choice but to swallow that bitter medicine whether you wanted to or not.

It was a bitter, bitter medicine.

Over fifty bodies lay at my feet, proof that I was too late to foil the bad guy's Master Plan. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, I succeeded in throwing a wrench into whatever insane plot the antagonist cooked up.

Not this time.

It was the bad guy who had the last laugh tonight. The leader of the cult that I was supposed to arrest had somehow gotten wind of the fact that the authorities (or the closest thing to the authorities) had caught on to his and followers unsavory ways and gathered his followers for one last banquet. With the specialty of the day being cyanide laced wine.

A complete and utter defeat. The reason I was still here was to clean up the aftermath of this mess.

I have nothing against religion as a whole -though you would be hard pressed to find anyone who believed in the Creator or any of the Pagan Gods these days- but when people start killing and committing crimes in the name of their beliefs against those they saw as 'non-believers' and 'sinners', that was when I felt obligated to interrupt the service with an well-organized raid and punch the Head Priest in the face.

Or whatever you call the guy in charge of a religious sect.

Unfortunately I couldn't do that (there went my outlet to vent my frustrations) since the Head Priest and the higher ups in his religion were all dead too. I have to give them credit in that they at least had the decency to follow through with their own teachings and kill themselves alongside with the rest. It was a twisted way of thinking of things, I know, but I've met complete hypocrites in the past who never believed in the things they preached to the masses and were just taking advantage of people who were scared out of their minds or dangling false hope to those in despair.

As twisted as this religion was and as delusional as the guys heading it had been, I knew from the reports I read that they had truly believed in their cause until the bitter end. Even if it was an incredibly idiotic one, in my own opinion.

"What a mess." I could feel the forming migraine already. "The higher ups are going to have a field day about this."

Along with everyone else who hated me and my family. To them, the Magnus failing in anything was something to celebrate. Those who despised us and fervently wished the Magnus dead consisted of the corrupted, the psychopaths, and anyone else who was contemplating to commit a crime for their own selfishness and greed.

Not that I cared about their opinions. They could come after me all they wanted; I would just cut them down all the same.

I heard footsteps coming up behind me and turned slightly to face the owner. It was highly doubtful that there were any survivors in the cult, but it never hurt to be careful; I can tell you from experience that being stabbed in the back was something to avoid at all costs. It was NOT fun to look down and find a blade sticking out of your stomach.

I relaxed when I saw who it was. "Any luck on your side?"

"Negative." Said the rose-haired woman in a flat voice. "I didn't find any survivors."

"Fantastic." My tone conveyed that I thought of her findings as anything but fantastic. "No survivors here either. Guess we just have to wait for Cloud-"

"Not a single person alive as far as I could see." A second voice spoke up from behind me even though I didn't sense anyone there.

Before I could even stop myself, I was already reflexively swinging one of my swords in the direction the second voice came from. There was a loud clang and sparks flew as blade met blade and metal clashed with metal. When I saw who the owner of the voice was, I jumped back and re-sheathed one of my twin swords.

"How," I said to the blond haired young man who had made the mistake of sneaking up on me again, "many times have I told you not to sneak up behind me like that?"

"You didn't do that to Lightning earlier." He pointed out.

Lightning rolled her eyes before shooting our third companion a piercing glare with her icy blue gaze. "That's because I let her know in advance that I was coming. I know better than to come up behind her without any warning."

Rule number six when it comes to dealing with any member of the Magnus bloodline: if you value your life at all do not, under any circumstances, conceal your presence from them. We will take that as a threat and deal out the appropriate response. And the 'appropriate response' usually turned out to be fatal to the other person since we consider those hiding their presence from us as enemies.

Which was pretty much 99.9% of the time, by the way.

Cloud was a special case in regards to that rule he had already snuck up behind me a total of twelve times and still had his life in tact. Then again, he was a genetically enhanced God Eater who had even more genetic modifications done to him in the name of science and the 'Good of the World'. He had survived the inhumane experiments that made him stronger than the average God Eater, but not without paying a hefty price.

A price, I knew, that was not worth the resulting strength. The look in this Cloud's eyes, and the one I knew before him, told me the answer to that. And often I found myself wondering if my own inhuman strength was worth being the person I was today.

"One day Cloud," I shot the man a glare of my own. "You won't be so lucky. I would have thought that you would have gotten that last time when I nearly severed your arm off."

Most people would have quailed underneath the combination of the look I sent them and any the lecture on whatever stupid stunt they had pulled; something that I was proud of since it took me years to perfect that fear inducing glare. But Cloud being Cloud just shrugged it off. He was one of the people I wasn't able to scare. There were few people I couldn't intimidate into doing; my older siblings, and finally Lightning and Cloud.

Which was probably why I got stuck having the latter two 'babysit' me on Arthur and Matthias, my twin older brothers', orders. I couldn't use my usual scare tactics on them to get my way like I did whenever anyone got smart with yours truly, which made them the perfect people to look after me. Considering that I was more than capable of looking after myself, I initially balked at my brothers' decision to make me bring the two of them when there was work to be done that I could do on my own thank you very much.

I didn't need babysitters, damn it.

But as usual the idiot twins ignored me and I had no choice but to take them on pain of being under house arrest.

After numerous attempts to ditch my new babysitters that never worked (the two of them were too good for that and their enhanced strength, speed, and stamina didn't make it any easier), I finally saw the advantage of not working alone, though it helped that the two of them were more than competent when it came to fighting. I resented their presence at first, but began to warm up to them when I saw that they were just as serious and good at completing their objectives as I was.

Not to mention that my missions had gotten done so much faster.

The rose haired woman with the steely blue eyes that could make you piss within seconds was Lightning Farron. Her real name is 'Eclair', but after her parents died she changed it in an effort to become a stronger, more confident person who was capable of protecting both her and her sister from the monsters that now roamed the Earth. In a way, she succeeded in doing just that: become a stronger person who took no one's shit who not only protected herself, but other people as well including her sister. Despite the disadvantage she had as both a teenager and a female when she voluntarily became a God Eater to earn a living for both her and her younger sister Serah after they were foreced to fend for themselves, Lightning quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the top God Eaters in the European branch that resided in what used to be France.

Ironically it was her younger sister who had ended up saving Lightning from a horrific fate.

Serah was the softer and kinder sister in comparison to Lightning's stoic and no-nonsense attitude when it came to the law, but you could tell they were related because they both had a steel of spine and were not afraid to show it, even to a member of the most dangerous family in the world. The girl had personally come up to me and demanded that I find what really happened to her older sister since she did not believe a word of Lightning dying in battle against a group of Aragami.

At first, I just brushed her off. The Magnus were responsible for dealing out punishment to the corrupt and the dangerous criminals that no one else could handle; we were not a charity group that ran around at the whims of other people's requests. But something in Serah's next words had stopped me cold and made me reconsider the demand to look for her sister.

So I took her request and went to look for one Eclair 'Lightning' Farron.

To this day I still don't know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. In my search for the 'By-the-book' woman, I delved into Fenrir's dark side of what they did to 'improve' their warriors who fought against the enemies of humanity on the front lines and the potential candidates. While the way Fenrir made their warriors out of ordinary civilians bordered on inhumane, what the French European branch was doing pushed right into the territory of cruelty and depravity.

It was also the place where I found Cloud Strife.

Cloud, who had the Aryan features of blond hair and blue eyes was probably the only survivor of the experiments in the French European Branch's pursuit of making stronger God Eaters. He originally lived in what used to be America but had been transferred to Europe when he was still pretty green on the field. Because his only family, his mother, had died during an Aragami invasion and Cloud was severely lacking in social skills to make friends, no one had missed him when the higher ups decided that he would make a good experimental test subject.

While Lightning had minor modifications done to her in the short time she had been taken off the field and marked down as KIA, Cloud was not so lucky.

Compared to the other subjects who had been driven completely insane and were nothing more than ranting and raving lunatics incapable of coherent thought and speech, Cloud had been completely catatonic. His bright, blue eyes stared ahead blankly and he didn't move at all during the time when he had been first taken into my family's custody to treat his... condition.

It took us months -nearly a year-to undo whatever the hell they did to him. Truth be told, I don't think he would ever fully recover from his experience in that hellish laboratory even if he had thirty years of therapy to help him.

Because he had nowhere else to go (his family was long dead), my brothers allowed Cloud to stay with the family for as long as he wanted. Not that he needed much convincing since he pretty much declared his allegiance to the Magnus after he became aware and conscious again, wanting nothing to do with the corporation that had stolen everything from him.

Couldn't blame him there.

The three of us didn't get along at first. Cloud and Lightning were just as enthusiastic about being forced into the role of babysitting as I was to be babysat. Lightning, in particular, grated on my nerves as she thought that I was way too young and inexperienced to be considered one of the Best of the Magnus. I snapped back at Lightning that I did not want to hear that kind of criticism from someone who voluntarily joined the Fenrir's corp ranks when she was sixteen. Cloud usually ended up getting tired of our arguing and tended to wander off when the two of us brought out our respective weapons and started swinging them at each other.

And then when we learned not to be constantly at each other's throats, the rest as they say, was history.

"So now that I am done reaming Cloud out for once again sneaking up on me," I say, shooting one last glare at him, "did you find anything relating to why so many people joined these-"

I gestured to corpses of the Leaders of the cult.

"-nut jobs?"

"What do you think?" Lightning retorted in her Lightning-esque way.

"Actually, I did." Cloud held out a sheet of paper he brought out from one of his back pockets and I took it from him.

"This almost makes up for your earlier stupidity, Cloudy." I said. "Almost."

"Don't call me 'Cloudy'."

I ignored the blond in favour of reading the sheet he had found.

I read the whole thing in a few minutes and summed it up out loud for my two companions. According to the sheet of paper, the 'Order of the New World' (yes, they actually called themselves that) believed in an event called the Devouring in which everyone but the chosen ones would die. And as part of their duties of being chosens one, they had to either convert the non-believers or cleanse their them of their sins so that they could meet in the New World, the world after the Devouring.

And by 'cleansing them of their sins' they meant 'kill those who refuse to have nothing to do with them and their religion'.

I nearly resisted the urge to bang my head against a hard object. Almost.

"Let me guess," Lightning's voice was oozing sarcasm. "The Order of the New World considered themselves the 'chosen ones'."

"Yup." I said.

"What's the Devouring?" Cloud asked as he settled himself comfortable on a chair, recognizing that it was going to be a while before we moved out.

Lightning and I stared at him.

"What?" Annoyance coloured his voice.

Lightning and I traded glances. Sometimes we forgot that Cloud had holes in his memories; holes that would never be filled in again. Did she want to explain it to him or should I? The look she shot me said that I should be the one to explain things to him since I was the one who brought it up in the first place. With a long, suffering sigh I turned to Cloud to explain.

"The 'Devouring' is short for 'Nova's Devouring Apocalypse'. I'm not too sure on the details, but it's pretty much the second end of the world." The first End of the World Event had been the coming of the monsters known as Aragami. "Basically after all the Aragami engage in a huge battle royale, the last standing Aragami, known as Nova, will trigger the 'Extinction of Humankind' by devouring the entire world and everyone on it."

I hated studying to the ninth dimension, but Nova's Devouring Apocalypse had been an interesting topic to read and I decided to delve into it for fun.

Short explanation of Aragami: they were monsters that came in all shapes and sizes that had appetites the size of black holes. They nom nomed everything they came across; whether it be a gigantic concrete building or any poor human who had the misfortune of encountering one.

"Is it true?" The incredulity on Cloud's face told us that he didn't believe a single word of it.

"Probably." I said.

I admitted that the Nova's Devouring Apocalypse theory sounded like something straight from a fantasy novel, but I knew better to completely dismiss it as being ridiculous. I considered myself pretty open minded in that aspect.

Lightning joined Cloud in his incredulity.

"Just so you know," I rolled my eyes as I started to explain myself. "Twenty years ago people would have never foreseen the Aragami, would have never expected it and would have dismissed the entire thing as completely ludicrous. If I were to travel back in time and announce to the people then that in the 2050s the world was going to end because of monsters with black holes for stomachs that ate everything in sight, I would have been thrown into the loony bin with no way of ever being released."

"That's different." Cloud said flatly. "Aragami are everywhere these days. You would have to be living in completely isolation and under a rock to not believe in them."

"But they didn't exist over twenty years ago." I shot back. "Humans are creatures who only believe what they see. Or believe in what they are told by people who did see and who they absolutely trust and even then they would probably take whatever they were told with a grain of salt. It's in their nature."

I was all too aware of human nature. Much more than I wanted too, but oh well. Beggars can't be choosers.

One thing about humanity that often made me want to scream to the pointed that I resembled nothing more than a mad woman was the fact that humans had the tendency to stick their heads into the ground and ignore the impending danger until they couldn't deny it any more. And this was usually when the danger was literally knocking down their front door. Though in the case of the Aragami they had already devoured the front door and were going after the inhabitants of the house. Nom. Nom. Nom.

"These people were crazy." Lightning shook her head in disgust. "To believe in something like the Nova's Devouring Apocalypse and to kill themselves over such a thing."

"This isn't the first time this happened, unfortunately." I sighed, agreeing with Lightning's sentiments. "When the theory of Nova's Devouring Apocalypse first went around, a lot of people around the world committed suicide since they couldn't handle the news of the world ending for good when humanity was barely surviving after the Aragami had made themselves known."

My dad had been furious and roamed up and down the halls swearing loudly. It had been hilarious to watch a man who was normally cool and collected rant at the top of his lungs about the *bleeping* guy he was going to kill for this piece of *bleeep*.

Considering my current situation, I could sympathize with him.

As my hand got acquainted with my face that was when I felt it.

That overwhelming presence that threatened to crush me where I stood. It was something I hadn't felt in a long time, but even after all these years I could still recognize it. This presence, this aura, was not something you could ever forget. Even if you only experienced it once, even if it was in a different life time.

My hands shot to the hilts of my blades, but as soon as I touched them I realized I couldn't move. It wasn't from fear; as a Magnus I learned to fear very little, but it was more of a fact that I literally could not move. The gravity around me had felt like it had increased in density by a hundred fold and I was amazed that I hadn't collapsed on the spot from the very weight itself.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't move.

I was completely paralyzed.

But that didn't mean I didn't fight against the pressure with everything I had. I managed to lift up my head up enough just in time to see Lightning and Cloud collapse like marionettes with their strings cut. I tried to call out their names, but no sound came out of my mouth. This probably had to do with the fact that I couldn't even open it.

As much of a bitch I was, that didn't mean I didn't show concern when my teammates who I had been with for a year now all of a sudden fell over.

"Sorry about that." A deep masculine voice resounded from behind me. "But I wish to speak with you alone."

Hah. That confirmed who it was.

I hadn't heard that voice in forever. I relaxed despite the fact that I had every reason to kick into high alert. After all, the last time I had met this guy had not been under pleasant circumstances. If he had wanted to kill me, I would have already been long dead. I hadn't experienced his full power, but I felt enough of it to know that there was nothing I could do against him.

Lost in thought, I hadn't realized that the owner of the voice had moved in front of me until my head was tilted upwards. I found myself staring into two different coloured eyes; one that reflected the deep red of flames and the other radiating the golden glow of the sun.

"It's been a while," Before I could stop myself, I was talking to the man as if we were acquaintances who hadn't seen each other for a while. In a way, that's exactly what we were. Acquaintances. At the same time, that was not enough to explain the connection between us. "I haven't seen you since the Massacre of Justice."

And this is where I'll end this chapter!

I'll tell you who the red and golden eyed man is next time! Also, do you know where this is going?

So tell me what you think of this chapter? Recognize a few characters? And also, do you think that I should add OCs submitted by you reviewers like Xen Kenshin has?