A/N: Hey guys (and gals), so this is my first ever fanfic; as such, any advice or suggestions on how to improve it would be appreciated. For now, please enjoy!
Prologue
A dark, seemingly abandoned warehouse, located someplace in rural Canada
"Did that do it?" a tired-sounding voice called out from the shadows in the corner of the room. The speaker, a young man, about 17, with medium length curly grey hair and piercing steel-blue eyes, emerged from a panel in the wall through which, by the now-visible light of his flashlight, a number of cables could be glimpsed. Standing at 6'6", with a barrel chest and well muscled arms and legs, he struck an imposing figure, and an unkempt curly beard that looked more like he hadn't bothered to shave than it did an intentional effort at serious growth seemed only to enhance the impression. His arms and face, along with his jeans, flannel shirt, and even his shoes, were covered in oil.
The target of his question, a blonde woman with brilliant green eyes who stood at just over 5'7", looked to be the same age as the man, and was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a white t-shirt under a light red sweater, was sitting at a desk before several monitors. She tossed the ponytail she had been readjusting back behind her head and focused her attention on the information now streaming across the screens in front of her.
"I think so..." she responded after a few moments. "Yeah... yeah, it's coming online!" her voice was getting steadily more excited as she typed a few commands into the keyboard before her before turning to face her friend. "I think we actually managed it! Just a couple of tests to make sure it's stable, and I think we've actually done it!"
"Seriously?!" he exclaimed, his previous exhaustion forgotten. Thrilled at this news, the man ran over to where she was to look at the information on the monitors himself, unable to contain his excitement. "Finally! We actually found a way to get to Remnant! God, this is amazing!" Regaining his composure, he faced the woman. "Are you sure you've managed to lock down a location and time that the portal will open to?"
"Of course. Outskirts of Vale, three months before the events of Volume 1, just like we planned."
"Good. That should give us time to get used to Remnant, find a way to get into Beacon, and establish some sort of surveillance to keep an eye on what Cinder's up to. If we're lucky, we may even discover Salem's location."
"Right. Commencing final tests. Ooh, this is so exciting!" The woman turned back to the monitors and began typing another series of commands into the keyboard, before the two of them looked up to the machine in front of them.
Before them, in the centre of the room, was a large circular platform, raised slightly from the floor. On three sides of the platform, spaced equally apart, were heavily reinforced metal scaffold-like structures which leaned inward to connect to a metal ring hanging above the centre of the platform. As they looked, electricity coursed through the wiring in the scaffolds, coalescing in the ring, until in the middle of the ring, hanging in the air, an orb of crackling blue electricity began to form. Slowly it grew, and blue tendrils, looking almost like short flashes of lightning, shot briefly down to the middle of the platform; the tendrils began to increase in number and frequency, and lasted longer and longer until gradually the centre of the platform had what seemed to be a solid column of crackling blue light stretching from the ground to the centre of the ring. The middle of the column began to expand outward, and inside a black void formed, before a forest appeared, with a red sky above indicating that it was near sunset, hovering there inside of a glowing blue doorway.
"Incredible..." the woman whispered, awestruck that their plans seemed to have finally borne fruit. "I can't believe we actually did it."
"We haven't quite done it yet. Let's begin." Taking an apple from the desk, the man walked to the edge of the platform and tossed it through the glowing entryway, watching as it landed, not on the other side of the platform, but on the floor of the forest they could see through the portal. "Well," he said, "it seems to transport matter at least. Time to see if living things can survive it."
The woman shuddered, as she told her partner, "I still don't like this."
"Nor do I," he responded, "but the math all checks out; there shouldn't be any danger to them, but if there is, we can't risk our foreknowledge of the events to come because..."
"I know..." she interrupted, speaking sadly, taking a bright yellow canary from a cage beside her, waking it from its sleep, before she took it to the platform beside her partner and tossed it into the forest. As they had hoped, it quickly flapped up, and, finding itself in a brightly lit, forested area, fluttered to a nearby branch and began singing.
"Oh, thank goodness" she breathed, seeing the bird was alright.
"Right then," the man said, going back to the keyboard and typing away. "Time for one last test."
Saying this, he took out a small black handheld device, about the size of a cell phone, and tapped briefly on the touch screen present on its face, before typing a command into the keyboard that popped up shortly. Immediately, the portal began to shut down, the electricity coursing through it fading away as its source was cut off.
"Excellent," he said, "control of the portal and its opening and closing has been successfully transferred to our long-range transceiver, and everything on our work is being permanently wiped from the computer as we speak."
"Meaning even if someone does find this place, they won't be able to use it, correct?" The woman received a nod in confirmation. "Of course," she continued, "they could still reverse-engineer the portal itself, but considering most of the real work is in the calculations and programming we had to develop, that still wouldn't get them too far."
"Right. We should be the only ones capable of using it for the foreseeable future, and with this in hand," at this he wiggled the black transceiver for emphasis, "we should be able to get back home anytime we feel we need to."
Saying this, he typed briefly once more into the device, and the portal began the process of reopening. As the crackling portal finally revealed the forest once more, the canary they had sent through earlier, startled at the sudden noise and reappearance of the gap between worlds, took off with a startled sound and flew away, and the two friends prepared to enter it.
"This is unbelievable. It's actually happening- we're travelling to a different world!" the woman enthused.
"Thrilling, isn't it?" A wide smile appeared on the man's normally neutral face, one of the rare times his emotions overcame his self-control and his feelings made themselves clear. "Well, I guess this is it. Remnant, here we come." As he spoke, the man walked back to the platform with the woman, and together they walked through the portal and into the forest, immediately collapsing, unconscious before they hit the ground.
Entering the warehouse, a shadowy figure approached the monitors in front of the platform. Quickly scanning the information on them before they disappeared entirely, a rough chuckle erupted from the concealed face, before an amused voice spoke out.
"So, you found a way to Remnant, did you? Heh, no doubt off trying to save Ruby and co from the events of Volume 3. Well, let's just see about throwing a wrench in those plans- after all, you're not the only ones who've seen what's to come for little Red."
As the computers purged themselves, they set off small charges intended to destroy the hard drives, preventing the information from ever being recovered and startling the figure out of his reverie. Seeing that the portal would soon close, the figure rose and swiftly walked through it, only moments before it shut down, and the warehouse was plunged into total darkness.
The Emerald Forest, just outside Vale, the following morning
Slowly coming to, the two people from the warehouse looked at each other in mild confusion.
"What happened?" The woman asked.
"I don't know. Whatever happened, though, it hurt."
"Wait." The woman started suddenly, shock on her face as her sleep-addled mind cleared and she saw something seriously off about her companion- and herself, now that she noticed it. "What are we wearing?"
"Huh?" He looked down for a moment, his own mind still fuzzy, but startled into wakefulness when he noticed what she was talking about.
He was now dressed in a clean pair of light blue jeans, with a high-quality sword belt of new leather, along with a pair of grey combat boots, which he could feel were reinforced, as well as a pair of steel greaves. He also had on a light blue t-shirt, over which was a steel breastplate with a small design over his heart: a gleaming yellow sun with a silver sword piercing it from above. His hands had soft leather gloves on, and there was a steel vambrace covering his right forearm, along with steel pauldrons on both shoulders, while his chest had two belts crisscrossing over the breastplate, both of which had a number of slots filled with what appeared to be shotgun shells, and a pouch on the left side of his sword belt contained what felt like weapon magazines. Finally, he had a wide, studded leather strap on his left forearm and a small metal object, roughly camera sized, clipped to the right side of his belt, apparently, magnetically. He reached for the pocket were he normally kept his wallet, pulled it out, and checked his ID. Somehow, his normal ID had changed as well as his outfit, and he quickly took in his new information.
"Steele Summers, is it?" He said, reading out his new (apparent) name. "Huh. Well, that was... Unexpected."
"And my new name seems to be, uh... Tania Tenné." His companion spoke, and "Steele" took a look at her new appearance.
A boiled leather cuirass was worn over a tan tank top, while black shorts reached halfway to her knees, a light brown leather belt around her waist, with several small pouches and a single larger one attached, the belt buckle in the form of a tan vortex, crossed by twin golden swords. Knee-high black socks were visible on her legs, underneath a set of bronze greaves, with tan combat boots on her feet. She had bronze vambraces on her arms, as well, with fingerless tan elbow-length gloves worn beneath them. Her normal pair of gold stud earrings were still on, as was her ring, a silver band with a small emerald set in it, worn on her left index finger, though a new waist-length tan cloak was on her back, fastened at her throat by a golden broach which took the same form as her belt buckle. Over her shoulders, he could see the tan hilts and crossguards, as well as the top of golden yellow blades, of a pair of swords, both of which had pommels that, once more, took the same form as her buckle- this, he could only assume, was meant to be "Tania's" crest. When she went to stand up, her back was to him briefly, and he saw her crest once more in gold on the back of her half-cloak, with her blonde hair now free of its ponytail to hang loose, reaching just beneath her shoulders. Getting a better look at the swords, he observed that they were fairly nondescript, apart from their pommels and colour, though he was now able to see that they were of different lengths. The blade over her right shoulder was a broadsword, while the other was a short sword, and both were strapped to her back via a magnetic plate.
As she stood, Tania stretched, then noticed Steele looking at the hilts of her swords. Not having noticed them yet, she glanced over her shoulder to see what he was looking at, and her eyes widened at the sight of the weapons. Grasping the twin hilts, she drew forth her new weapons with a grin and a flourish.
"Nice balance they've got." She said admiringly, giving the blades a few twirls, before a strange, faraway look came into her eyes, and she brought the two blades together, connecting the two with some mechanical whirs and clanks, the now-fused weapon changing shape entirely until she held in her hands a semi-automatic sniper rifle with a gold-coloured scope and barrel and a tan stock, her crest present on either side of the butt. "Neat," she said, her grin widening even further.
Steele looked on, impressed, before looking down thoughtfully and muttering to himself, "I wonder." He took the metal object clipped to his belt in his hand, strange thoughts springing unbidden into his mind. Hardly realizing what his body was doing, he found the object expanding outward until he held what he recognized as a bastard, or hand-and-a-half, sword, so called because the hilt size and balance allowed it to be wielded effectively either one- or two-handed. "Caliburn", he heard somewhere in his mind, noticing subconsciously that the word also seemed to have been spoken out loud by... him, he supposed. At the same time, the strap on his left arm began to expand, bringing forth a tower shield of the same light yet extremely sturdy material that the sword, and, now that he thought about it, nearly all the weapons used by Huntsmen and Huntresses in Remnant, seemed to be made of. Though unseen by him, the same symbol present on his breastplate was also emblazoned upon the front of his shield, the sun and sword residing upon a field of white. Looking at the shield, the name again leapt to both his lips and mind. "Aegis." The top of the shield, he noticed, curved downward toward the centre, and in the middle, at the lowest point, there was what appeared to be some sort of mount. His body again knowing what to do even before his mind did, he found the sword in his hand changing form once more, until he held a pump-action shotgun, which he found could be easily attached to and detached from the mount on the shield.
"Pretty cool," Tania told him, a massive smile adorning her face, "but I still think my Crimson Rain is cooler. And it's got a way better name."
"You wish," came the response from Steele, who also found himself uncontrollably smiling. "Well, we're here, we seem to be pretty well equipped, and we know what we have to do. Let's get to it."
The two friends put their weapons away, before brushing the leaves and other greenery off themselves and walking together towards the nearby city which they both recognized as Vale.