Summary: Tobias blames everything, including himself. He wants nothing more than to bring Rachel back. So when that dream suddenly becomes tangible…well, it was no wonder things turned out the way they did.

Takes place during The Beginning, one year after Rachel's death, and during the time skip between the time when General Cross is attacked and deemed murdered, and the point at which Timothy is found.

A/N Prologue – like the others, serves more as a continuation of the entire series. Pretty much, only the last line is actually involved with Chapter One onward.

Now that NaNoWriMo's done, I get to finally update this! Special thanks to The One Called Demetra for the beta work!

Disclaimer: D. Gray-man is owned by Katsura Hoshino, and Animorphs belongs to K. A. Applegate. I own absolutely nothing in relation to either works, except for the idea to mesh them together.

Prologue

He almost laughed at the absurd happening.

Crayak had been forced into servitude for four weeks in human time – and that was four weeks longer than he liked. He had absolutely no say in the events that must be transpired, and it was a situation that he had several thousand millennia to forget, yet now it was biting back at him as a dog may to a chew toy. There was no doubt: he found relief at the almost comic event where the roar of rage from his superior had been heard precisely two seconds before the interdimensional link between them actually opened.

It was a pathetic reaction, though he would never admit that to himself.

Though, whether he was laughing or not mattered little; all traces of his lighter mood vanished when a wine glass was hurled through said link and smashed into his eye.

There was little more he could do than simply glare; well, that and completely melt the glass that had shattered upon contact with his "eye", until they were clear drops that fell from his head, almost giving the impression that he was crying. How it managed to fall parallel to and along his armless body was anyone's guess, since there was no actual gravity in Z-space. That being said, nothing Crayak could do would stop the other from doing it again, and nothing Crayak could do would stop the other from speaking.

"The witch was ahead of me, all along. The cat's curse was broken. The Trojan Horse has been destroyed, and the Doppelganger with it. She has far more allies than we. Though it has not happened yet, even the Five Elements project will inevitably fail."

'He truly loves the sound of his own voice,' Crayak noted, for the fifth time.

Though the other must have heard that thought, he still did not turn to face the red-eyed entity.

"The Hollowfication is going too slowly. The second FREEDOM will not occur for a half-decade. Gulmjulum..." Here the man scowled. Crayak knew it was directed at him, though he still could not see it. "It is a pointless project. There is little I can accumulate there."

If there was one thing Crayak hated to be seen as more than being an underling, it was being incompetent. "The girl –"

"I must invest more in Rose Red," the other overrode. "Destruction of logic is the more viable operation. As backup, you shall work on cultivating the Chimera Ants further. And...we shall need more diversity, as a precaution."

"The girl holds potential."

"The girl holds enough power to redecorate your face," the man spat. "Your obsession with revenge is slowing my objective down, cretin!"

"Yet you so insist on obsessing over your own girl, the one with the feathers."

The portal suddenly widened and, before even Crayak could react, swallowed him, expelling him into the stranger's chamber. The first thing that was immediately noticeable was the brown-haired girl suspended only a little way off, near the centre of the stone room, and it was immediately clear to the inferior entity that the girl was dying.

"Her magic is of amplification. It is one of a kind. Imagine if two of them meet, causing the feedback of magical energies. That, not the time-space anomaly of yours, is enough to destroy everything in an instant. Including you."

"There is no two," Crayak interjected.

"Not until the other is re-created, true." The man finally turned to face the red entity, and from somewhere, a source of light bounced off the frame of his monocle, drawing Crayak's attention. They were seeing eye to eye. How ironic.

Then what the man said next drew Crayak's full attention.

"If you must, you may deal with your affairs first. We shall need the Revivor, and he's as perfect a chance for you to exact revenge as you will receive."