Minor adjustments and edits. I want to thank Herr Wozzeck and erttheking for their help and letting me bounce ideas off of them.
I highly suggest checking out their works!
Here we go!
Edits as of 04/21/2017
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Prologue: Echoes in the darkness
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A flash of blinding light suddenly fills an empty room. The room itself is empty save for the form of a startled woman who had been examining the now abandoned property of her missing, and presumed dead, cousin. When the light clears she finds a small black box that has glowing blue lines along each side. As she reaches for the box, curiosity overruling sense, there is a pulse from the box and a single small blue orb with a orbital ring rises to float above the box itself. A female voice issues from the box, although no speakers are visible upon it and the woman shifts back a few feet, a nervous expression on her face.
'What you are about to hear may not be easily believed. You may doubt my words and that is understandable. I ask that you set aside all thoughts of what you believe you know about reality. Allow for the possibility that what you are about to hear, what you are about to learn, is real.
This is a record of two humans, one male, one female, both drawn into the reality of another world. That's right. I am attempting to tell you that the Multiverse theory is, in a sense, true.
These two humans were given a choice. Though it was not much of a choice at all.
They were to choose between dying on their own world or come to a dimension that was not their own in order to fight and to possibly, quite probably in fact, die. All in an attempt to keep said dimension and its' neighboring timelines from falling apart. Collapsing in on one another in an implosion of energy that would potentially destroy dozens of dimensions. Trillions upon trillions of lives were on the line.
They chose to live. They chose to fight. Though much of what they would face, they faced alone. Separated from each other throughout much of their journey.
They learned about their task, about their new lives and what would be required of them from a mysterious being known to them only as 'The Lore Keeper'. They learned that each Dimension was comprised of hundreds, if not thousands of neighboring Timelines. They also learned about beings that were born with the ability to traverse the dimensions at will. Many of these natural dimensional travelers simply... watched. Ascribed to a kind of, 'non-interference rule' and letting events outside of their home dimension happen as they would without direct intervention on their part.
On occasion however one of these individuals, known as D-hoppers, would try to change events in misguided attempts to make things better. Only to make things far, far worse, by causing the eventual collapse of multiple timelines if not outright destroying the entire dimensional 'ring'. Those who survived such tamperings often felt guilt of such level that they went insane and would need to be stopped. Others... others simply started out insane and their greeted wish, their greatest desire, is to cause just such collapse for 'fun and games'. They enjoy the destruction that they can cause and play vicious games with their victims, trying to break them by showing them the sights of creatures, monsters and horrors from other dimensions.
By trying to take away their sense of hope for any victory.
The Lore Keepers duty then, as was explained to them, was to help monitor all the many dimensional 'rings' and their subsequent timelines to insure that such collapses would not occur or, in the event that a collapse was unavoidable, could be countered enough so that the neighboring dimensions and timelines would be minimally affected. To this end they search for and find, or attempt to find, those who fit particular personality types.
They refer to these types of individuals as the 'Hero' and the 'Necessary'.
The 'Hero'; one who tries to save everyone, sometimes to the detriment to their own safety. There is no such thing as a 'no win scenario' for these individuals. There is no non-interference policy that they cannot work around in order to prevent a civilization from being destroyed. There is no 'D-day' that cannot be circumvented. They will do what they can to save lives even at the potential cost of their own. A noble heart who sees even the loss of the 'one' for the 'many' as failure, unless the 'one' is themselves.
The 'Necessary'; one who makes the hard choices even if it paints them in the light of a 'villain' they will do what they must to save the most lives in the long term. If it helps you to understand this personality, please think, if you will, of having to face the choice of saving one hundred children versus a team of scientists who are on the verge of a cure of a slow acting virus, a cure that would save millions. You might choose the children, while a 'Necessary' personality type would choose the scientists, thus finding themselves lauded a monster for a Long Term choice to save millions at the cost of those children's lives.
Thus, with these personality types in mind, the Lore Keeper chose two people from a version of the world called Earth. Specifically, this version of Earth and this specific timeline. A couple, engaged and happily enjoying themselves at a simple convention. The year for them was 2013 when the Lore Keeper called on then. And they found themselves thrown into a universe not their own all in a desperate bid to save each other's lives and the lives of people's, entire species, not their own. They were given backgrounds so they would be able to mesh more easily with that universe and not be out of place, but of course, there was no way to give them memories of their 'created' lives.
The most that they could do was choose who and what they would want to be in that universe, should they live and complete their mission. The Lore Keeper set them upon the paths to their desires, though they had the firm reminder that they could not, would not, be able to set aside their tasks.
They were given the physical gifts that they would have to learn to master through vicious trial and error. They were given no time to adjust to such changes. No, they were thrown into the fire to succeed or fail.
They would have no family to turn to in this other world and, even when they wished to turn to each other for comfort, they would find themselves light years apart. They would be able to do nothing but comfort each other through their words. A cold comfort indeed.
I was sent here to share their story with you. You will hear their thoughts, their hopes in small audio recordings either before or after each 'log'. All that I ask, all that they ask, is that you be willing to believe...'
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