Chapter 1: A Story That Starts From Zero

"Why am I even here?" Unsure she would ever know the answer, Rei Futaba felt like she shouldn't have been surprised by anything anymore, lost in an unknown world where she didn't even recognize herself. Yet it was hard to say which was stranger, the blue flames shrouding the left eye of the girl aiming a cannon at her amidst a deserted landscape dotted by checkered patterns and blade-like rocks, or the feeling that she surely knew that girl even though it shouldn't be possible.

It all began after Rei had gone to sleep one night, three days after she started to believe her life couldn't get any worse. "Can this even be considered God proving me wrong…" she wondered while slumped tiredly against a wall in the surreal place in which she had awoken staring at her hands, "…when it seems like I'm not even me anymore?" Her short hair and face still looked similar, but her hair was now an ashen black color and eyes a vivid shade of pink. The most glaring change though were her black skeletal claws that had replaced her hands, with large black stitches running up her arms from them. They looked partially mechanical with black metallic casing like gauntlets from the knuckles up. Able to even see her reflection in her smooth, blade-like talons, she'd gone into quite a panic at first.

Feeling as if this must be a world out of a dream, she'd awoken in a desolate place with gray land and skies littered with stone ruins, most of them badly deteriorated. Pillars stood supporting nothing, strands of black chains hung in strange places, and cracks in the parched earth here and there that transitioned strangely into patches of black and white floor tiles patterned like a chessboard. The area wasn't uninhabited, but the inhabitants had been frightening. Wearing black cloaks and hoods while scurrying about making rattling noises, despite cowering at the sight of them they surprisingly seemed more cautious of her. Working up the courage to try talking to them, they'd only ran and hid from her. Her claws crossed her mind, but hiding themselves beneath those cloaks made it impossible for her to tell if she should appear odd to them or not.

Rei started wishing she had a cloak for herself, the almost all black outfit she had on now was embarrassing. She'd found herself wearing an open-back dress with short, puffy sleeves tied together in the middle of her back by a string. Its frilly skirt had a number of decorative ribbons at the back, but was uncomfortably short. Add thigh high stockings with garters and short boots with a white stripe on them, and she would normally consider it a blessing she didn't know a soul here. Cynically thinking about that, she nearly jumped out of her skin as a voice suddenly asked, "Have you given up on talking?" She followed the voice to a bizarre young woman with green eyes and shoulder length black hair that turned green at its tips, sitting up on top of a stone pillar watching her.

At a bit of a loss, Rei just stared and didn't reply at first. Sporting a black witch hat with a green and black piece of spiked metal coiled around the pointed part of it, her top consisted of a white blouse under a brown corset and a collared black shirt buttoned at the top with the rest left undone. A black ribbon attached to its sleeves wrapped in a knot adorning her blouse like a tie. The sleeves looked stitched on, and hanging from them by gold metal crosses was a large black shawl with cream-white frills and silver decorative chains. It seemed to double as a skirt, the only other visible clothing aside from ankle-high black and silver boots.

Having failed to get a response, the witch jumped off the pillar and held up one of her black skeletal claws as she insistently said, "Have you? I was interested you see. If you haven't." Rei's eyes widened, although it was all bone instead of metallic parts and wasn't the same shape it was still similar. Getting ahold of herself, she awkwardly asked, "Uh, who are you?" Raising an eyebrow, the witch remarked, "Does it matter? What were you trying to talk about earlier, was it unimportant?" Rei felt as if she had irritated her somehow, and she shook her head quickly as she said, "No, I really need to know! What is this place, where am I? That's what I was asking them." Raising a boned hand to her chin as she took this in, the witch curiously replied, "Really? Well this is the Empress' domain. It's really not the best place to wander into."

Hearing words like Empress and domain, Rei started to worry she might get in trouble for something as she stammered, "W-who is the Empress again?" Seeming deep in thought, the witch quietly concluded, "Well it's not strange you wouldn't know this much, I'm more interested you're trying to communicate in the first place. To even be speaking directly just like I do…" Moving on without answering the question, she pressed further, "For what reason did you enter such an unfamiliar place?" Realizing she was the one being questioned at this point, in frustration Rei just exclaimed, "How should I know?!" Sighing, the witch glanced around their surroundings briefly before saying, "It seems as though there is too much to discuss for us to speak here. Would you mind coming with me?"

Without another word, the witch jumped back up onto the pillar and over to an intact archway as though she were leaving. Rei quickly called out, "Wait!" Stopping and looking back at her now, the witch just called back, "Do you not wish to come? I'd rather not linger here." Wondering how she even expected her to follow, she incredulously answered, "It's not about wishing to, I can't… I can't just jump that high!" Quickly coming back, as she landed next to her the witch stared at her strangely and asked, "Are you serious?" Surprised by the way she'd asked that, Rei hesitantly replied, "Is that strange?" Now the witch's eyes widened a bit, then she looked up at the pillar and simply said, "Try it."

Blinking in surprise, Rei uttered, "Eh?" Raising one of her clawed hands to point up at the pillar, the witch repeated, "Just try." Unable to believe what she was hearing, as she slowly turned her gaze up to where she'd been told to jump to, asking the impossible was all she could think of. Nevertheless, after a moment she bent her knees, and then the next she had leapt up high above the pillar in the air. She fell off as soon as she landed though, too shocked by the unexpected result. Bypassing the pillar and leaping back up to the archway, with a wave of her clawed hand the witch beckoned, "See? Now keep up." Not wanting to get left behind, Rei struggled up as she put aside the impossible and quickly chased after her as it became more clear just how different this world was.

Following the unnamed witch away from where the hooded people had lived, Rei crossed nothing but the same desolate landscape as she ran and jumped after her. Coming to a wide, open stretch of dried up earth the witch suddenly stopped and turned to her as she came to a stop as well. Eyeing her with a seemingly guarded gaze now, she inquired, "I feel rather hesitant to question it at this point, but it seems it didn't even cross your mind to fight me. Is that correct?" Feeling very wary of this sudden topic, Rei evasively asked, "F-fight you? Why would I do that, I don't really even know how to fight." Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, one of the witch's hands reached into her shawl as she coldly remarked, "Shall we see if that is mistaken as well?"

Rei let out a surprised cry as streaks of green light narrowly shot past her and a loud noise erupted from behind. Engulfed by dust blown up in a cloud from behind her, she glanced back at six metal knives stuck in the ground still glowing with a green aura. Extremely frightened, she cried out, "What are you-" She lost her voice as she turned back to see the witch closing the distance riding something that that looked like a rod made of black and gold bone and metal, glowing green crystals sticking out the large bladed back end just like the bristles of a broom. Arm outstretched with her clawed hand held flat like a spear point, the witch shouted, "Shall we?!" Eyes wide in terror, Rei stood frozen as the skeletal claws sped directly towards her neck.

At the last second, the witch came to an abrupt stop and for a moment both of them remained motionless. Then Rei fell to her knees as the witch lowered her arm and stated, "It's true then, I should have surely taken a heavy injury in that exchange. Not only do I avoid fighting, but I attacked you openly in close combat instead of at range." Looking up at her sitting there on her bizarre floating broomstick, Rei just steamed, "Of course it's true! If that's so strange, why else would I even say I couldn't fight?!" Raising up a finger, in reply she noted, "No. You said you didn't know how, and I'm afraid you don't understand just how strange both those statements are." Rei's face went from confusion to disbelief as the witch explained, "You should have instinctively known enough to be able to fight since birth. The fact that you don't would mean you are not from this world, correct?"

Rei found it unbelievable she had reached this point already without having to try explaining her circumstances at all. Standing up quickly, the mountain of questions she had stirred up inside as she eagerly replied, "Yeah, it's really true! Do you know how I can go back?!" She looked down at her skeletal claws and continued, "Is this even my own body?! What happened to me?! Why am I even here?!" Folding her hands in thought for a moment, the witch began to theorize, "A number of things come to mind, but you seem as though you are completely unaware of your other self… Was there something in your life you were struggling to cope with? A pain that made you desire escape?"

Turning away dejectedly as she recalled her unpleasant situation at home, Rei slowly admitted, "Something terrible happened, and my parents started to argue. It's my fault though, if they divorce…" Holding up one of her clawed hands to the witch with a look of horrific realization, she asked, "Did this happen to me because of that? Am I in Hell?" She was surprised how quickly the witch took hold of her hand and reassuringly denied, "Nothing of the sort. This is not your body, just as you had assumed. It belongs to another you in a sense, but at the same time we are very different from you. We affect each other in certain ways, but because we vanish if you die it's not uncommon for us to spirit you away when you are suffering."

Pulling her hand away angrily as she thought of her parents' reaction to her disappearance, Rei shouted, "Doing that will just make everything even worse! Just what are you, some kind of demons?!" Adjusting her hat a bit awkwardly now, the witch just replied, "Who knows? These are merely things I have observed to be truth, such a question is irrelevant to most of us." Holding her arms out to their gloomy gray surroundings she added, "We are always fighting each other in this world, for territory, survival, various unspoken desires… for some it's as if fighting is the only thing they know. There are exceptions to everything though." Pointing at Rei now, she stated, "I happen to be one such exception. I spend my time seeking knowledge, and you interest me. It is as if you, a human, have possessed your other self." Tired of the whole conversation at this point, Rei slumped her shoulders and simply asked, "Do you have any idea how I can get back or not?"

Shaking her head no, the witch remarked, "I don't even understand your situation, but you're quite fortunate. During possession, your body takes on our form and powers, but to regain control you'd normally have broken the possession and been lost here as a normal human once we return to our own body. Again exceptions exist, as I'm talking to one after all." Her gaze downcast in disappointment, Rei could only manage an, "I see." Showing a smile for the first time, as though she'd had great idea, the witch added, "You're the second one I've encountered of late that seems to have possessed someone. Our kind should not be able to directly enter your world, so why not make use of their normal situation and see what sort of abnormal benefits you may be able to reap from it?" Looking up at her in surprise, she uttered, "Huh?"

Riding behind the witch on her broomstick, Rei mulled over her words that had convinced her to try to find the other person she had encountered. Somewhere she called the Sky Gates the witch had seen a girl in a hooded jacket sitting alone on top of a tall rock formation. She had not spoken to her, she didn't dare. The girl noticed her almost immediately, and her eyes had a deadly presence. Apparently, when her kind possess their human selves they not only become more powerful, a portal also opens between the two worlds. Those portals can remain open for a while, so at her suggestion Rei planned to see if she could forcibly return to her own body and world by entering such a portal.

Once they'd flown a great distance the gray skies abruptly faded away, turning blue as the landscape suddenly changed to a bottomless looking chasm and what almost looked like thorny vines of twisted, blade-like rock formations rising up from it in coiling patterns. There were complex layers of uneven terrain stretched across the chasm to form huge land bridges, their zigzagging paths seeming to reach down into its very depths. The various sized pieces of blade-like rock sticking out of the ground and cliffsides everywhere were black in color, looking to Rei like a metallic ore of some kind, and she noticed some were actually growing and changing shape at a visible rate. Even from the air, many misshapen monoliths loomed over them as though they reached beyond the sky.

Landing on one of the upper land bridges, as her broomstick came to hover over the ground the witch said, "This is as far as we go together. That person can attack from afar, you'll have no way to escape and I'll just have a helpless ally to worry about." Freezing up a she realized she was probably being abandoned, Rei slowly reasoned, "You're not wrong, I guess… but-" Holding up a finger, the witch cut her off saying, "Calm down, I just said you were an ally. That is how we think of others we work with when our interests align, I'm not about to just leave when something interesting might happen. I'll be scouting nearby while keeping an eye on you." With a much warmer smile this time, extending her hand she added, "In answer to your first question, I am Elder Caster. Just call me Magician if you prefer, I'm aware both are strange names in your world but it's a bit shorter at least."

Truly surprised she wasn't being cast aside as dead weight, slowly Rei reached out with her own skeletal hand and grasped hers, shaking hands as she said, "I'm Rei Futaba. You can just call me Rei." Magician actually let out a chuckle at this, releasing her hand as she remarked, "Your name is a bit odd for a human as well is it not?" Slightly offended, she retorted, "Just what would you find so odd about it?" With a shrug of her shoulders in a smug way as if mocking the thought she wouldn't know, Magician confidently answered, "We have more awareness of you than you do of us. From my understanding of Japanese, you could almost write it so that it might be mistaken as numbers. Your surname is rather uncommon as well isn't it?"

Rei could only stare in surprise that she knew things from a different world. Her surname being more common as a first name aside, the right way to write her name was 霊 but another way to write Rei, 零, could mean zero. In addition, while Futaba isn't always written 二葉, her surname with one less kanji would be 二, meaning two. Suppressing embarrassing memories of playing pretend as a small child, she turned deep red as Magician took off while calling out, "Well then, good hunting Zero Two!" Scowling, she just shouted back, "Shut it Granny Caster!" Stomping off she was still red in the face, unable to get one pretend name in particular out of her mind now.

While the domain from before had been eerily quiet aside from the rattling hooded figures, here in the Sky Gates the only thing Rei heard was the faint howling of the wind. She trudged onward across ground that became broken and uneven in many places, patches of it covered in the checkered patterns she had seen before. Sometimes the path even led down to another layer, and she made sure not to linger in places Magician may be unable to see her. Growing increasingly tired of just wandering as she realized this had been terribly planned, in a moment where the wind briefly died out she suddenly heard what sounded like faint footsteps. Quickly hiding behind a formation of stone almost like a saw tooth, she peeked out from behind to see another strange looking person.

Headed her way wearing a long black hooded jacket with a white stripe along the length of each sleeve and a white five-pointed star symbol on its front left, a girl with vivid blue eyes and black, uneven twin-tails walked in silence carrying a large black cannon. Long metal clamps ran along the length of its barrel and a grated cylinder near the stock, and the grip and trigger were likely inside the weapon from the way she held it with her left hand. Beneath her jacket, she only wore a string bikini top and tight fitting shorts, everything black except for white designs on her knee high boots and a white belt. Trying to think in terms of this world, Rei reasoned, "If you're fighting then clothes like this won't get in your way as much, but they still have some charms to them. It still makes it hard to tell if anyone here cares about their appearance or not though…"

The girl in black was a bit skinny and there were scars on her midriff. Unlike her and Magician, she also had normal hands, over which she wore black gloves. Just like the description, Rei definitely felt she looked unfriendly, wearing a blank expression as stony as the rocks around her. She froze up as the girl suddenly stopped and seemed to look in her direction, recalling how Magician said she'd noticed her instantly before. She wondered if she should just come out but then the girl just looked up briefly before turning around and going back the way she came. As she did, Rei saw that there was a large white star symbol on the back of her jacket as well. Letting out a sigh of relief, thinking about how that girl had looked up she wondered, "Has she noticed us both but just doesn't care?"

Just as Rei was considering whether to follow or not, a voice with an odd echo that sounded very close warned, "Don't you dare follow her! She doesn't give a crap right now, but she'll destroy you next time." Startled, feeling as if she'd heard the voice before, she looked around whispering, "Who's there?" Suddenly moving on its own, one of her arms raised itself up so she was staring at her reflection in her metallic claws, and the voice wisecracked, "I'd say look in a mirror, but there aren't many around." Shocking and confusing were the only words to describe it. While in the same body, she was meeting with her other self to whom it belonged. It made her truly wonder, "What is an other self? Some part of the same person? Mirror images in a world linked to ours on a different plane? Alternate versions from other possible timelines or universes?"

As though she could hear the thoughts in her mind, her other self relinquished control of the arm and nagged, "None of that matters, aren't you trying to get back? Go ahead, but I'll take over if you get on someone's bad side again." A frightening declaration, Rei nervously asked, "Could you just take your body back whenever you want?" Obviously able to tell she was afraid her now, her other self sounded self-conscious as she remarked, "Calm down, jeez! This is why I didn't just pop up and say 'Hi!'… I let you pass Magician's test and stayed out of your way, I'm not that bothered by whatever's going on so I won't stop you from doing what you want, within reason. I really don't think I'm asking for much in return when I say I'm not interested in dying yet."

In agreement with that feeling, Rei calmed down a bit after hearing this. Feeling awkward trying to have a conversation with herself, she raised her hand and stared at her reflection again as she asked, "Who are you?" Understanding the context, her other self replied, "My name? You'll just turn red like earlier." Hanging her head, that alone was enough to answer, raise more questions, and make her regret asking. She quickly changed subjects and snapped, "Never mind then! What do you mean when you said she'd destroy me? Do you know each other?" With a cynical chuckle, her other self remarked, "Knowing people isn't really a thing here so it's odd to say it like that. More like water and oil, since you hated her she'll sense a natural hostility from me and blow my head off." Rei's mind felt as if it stopped suddenly. For a few seconds she just stood there looking pale, and then weakly repeated, "I… hated her?"

Quickly chasing after the girl in black now, Rei listened to her other self shouting in her head, "Are you crazy?! Don't just go walking up to her, she'll kill you!" She just demanded, "What did you mean?! Tell me!" Her other self growled back, "Stop being so hung up on that! It won't matter either way if you get us both shot!" Having noticed she wasn't forcibly stopping her despite her protests, she stubbornly declared, "I don't care! If you don't like it, either tell me or stop me yourself!" Her other self went silent, obviously not willing to say anything. Passing through an enclosed path between layers, she arrived in a large open area at the bottom of a huge hole in all of the land bridges above.

The blade-like rock formations were still all over, but the ground here was more level and none of the rocks had blocked the view up through the hole. It was unlike the landscape Rei had seen while descending through the layers, she even noticed some sort of straight poles that seemed made of the same black ore lined up as though along a path, and there was a long cylinder shaped object like a large gun barrel rising crookedly out of the middle of the area. Not far away from it stood the girl in black, her mismatched twin-tails and coat fluttering in the wind as she stared back at her. Slowly making her way towards the girl, something about her really did feel familiar. Still, it could not be that person. From what Magician had told her, that person should not have a counterpart here.

Even though Rei kept telling herself this, she couldn't stop wanting to believe as she called out to her, outright asking, "Please tell me, who is your human self?!" The girl in black simply stared blankly without answering. As Rei kept getting closer though, she suddenly raised up her cannon and aimed directly at her as a bright blue flame sparked to life from her left eye, trailing slightly to the side as it burned. Lost in her thoughts even as she stopped in surprise, she stood staring as the cannon's barrel glowed as if looking past it to the girl with the flaming eye, her fear overshadowed by the surreal dream this all seemed to be as she wondered, "What am I even doing here? Why would you be here?!"

Reacting more appropriately to staring down a cannon, her other self cursed, "Shit, her portal's closed! Give me control already! We'll die if we don't fight back!" Feeling her arm trying to move on its own, Rei hysterically shouted, "You can't, NINJA ZERO TWO!" The cannon fired with a loud bang, but the projectile shrouded in blue fire missed and exploded on the rocks behind her instead after a streak of green light from above had deflected its aim at the last moment. As she stopped trying to take control, Rei's other self, Ninja Zero Two suddenly questioned, "Don't you get tired of all these regrets? Since it's the last chance we might get, why don't you say what you really feel?" On the verge of tears, in shame Rei cried out, "Even if I said I hated her, I didn't mean it!"

Having shifted her attention to Magician in the air on her broomstick with glowing knives ready, the girl in black returned her attention to Rei now, who in a trembling voice asked, "Rei Futaba, do you know that name? I started using it after Dad remarried, Mom's family surname that I always liked, even before she died. I refused to face the truth and hurt people that reached out to me, I was just running away, and suddenly it was too late!" The girl stared at her silently as tears ran down her face, and staring back desperately Rei repeated, "Please tell me, who is your human self?!" The girl turned away and aimed her cannon up at Magician now as a voice unmistakably similar to the one she thought she would never hear again spoke in her mind, simply saying, "Leave."

Feeling her body back away under Ninja Zero Two's control, Rei desperately protested, "Stop it! Leave me alone, I'm not done talking to her!" Not obeying this time, she replied, "No, you've done enough. She's already told you what to do, hurry up and go find your answers." Her train of thought derailing, in confusion Rei asked, "What are you talking about?" Suddenly there was a loud ringing in her ears as her vision blurred with a hazy pink color, and she barely heard Zero Two say, "She opened the portal for you, and told you to leave… So cheer up and go home already." A second later, all went dark as she lost consciousness. Staggering a bit once Rei left her body, while the girl in black was firing her cannon at Magician in between dodging her glowing knives, Zero Two locked her pink eyes on her now and flexed her claws as she thought to herself, "Maybe I'll even do some overtime for you!"

Closing in and throwing a punch, she struck the girl dead on in the side of her face while she was still looking up at Magician, who flinched as she went skidding across the ground on her feet about two meters. Then, instead of speaking directly like Magician, Zero Two used telepathy to say, "The moment it came true, she hated herself for wishing without thinking." As though speaking about someone she had known all her life, she continued, "She hates difficult things like change, is stubborn and gets annoyed easily. She selfishly wants attention, but deep down she's a fool who truly loves others and is truly hurting, unable to express how lonely she is."

Zero Two narrowed her eyes as she remarked, "Gazing at shining lights we can never be... It's hard to watch sometimes, isn't it Black Rock Shooter?" Claws ready, staring her down she pressingly added, "I just hate to see her cry. If it's the same for you then I know how you feel, but for Rei's sake and hers it's time she woke up." Glancing up at Magician and noticing she stopped fighting once Zero Two began talking to her, Black Rock Shooter let her eye flame die out and lowered her cannon as she telepathically replied, "You're wrong." With that, she just turned around and started to leave.

Coming around to find herself lying on a cold, hard floor, as Rei opened her eyes she noticed some of her own reddish-brown hair in her field of vision. She weakly muttered, "I'm back... A dream?" Then as she looked more closely, she could tell she was now in a room that definitely was not inside her house. Slowly sitting up, it became apparent she was in a hospital room. Then as she saw her, Rei stared in disbelief at the person lying in a bed asleep, a girl only a couple of years older with black hair. She immediately started crying, covering her face as she sobbed, "It really was you, Mato nee-san…"

A month had passed since Rei Futaba, actually Rei Kuroi, and her father in Europe on business received word from home in Japan that the search for survivors from a crashed plane carrying a group of high school students on a school trip would end, and that her older stepsister, Mato Kuroi, along with everyone onboard were deemed deceased. However, it seems a number of cases of teenage children found in comas were somehow lost in the records of various hospitals across the coastline of Japan. Subsequently never cited as possible survivors, both police and other officials could offer no explanation as to how this had happened, but a chain of strange events involving Rei Kuroi one summer night led to the discovery that all the students were actually still alive.