Author's Note: Whew, I have to say, this took longer to finish due to a number of complications that have been going on throughout February. I don't want to make too many of these prologues, but I do need to set up the story in various places before things start coming together, so expect a couple more in the meantime. Please enjoy.

Prologue II: "One Who Understands Another"

Unknown area...

It was hard to say just where she was at the moment. Rita Mordio, the genius mage of Aspio, was with Flynn before she had found herself engulfed in that weird light from the crystal coffin-like object the Imperial Knights had discovered. She still wasn't sure what it had been exactly, but her primary concern was where she was transported. Rita had awakened, head throbbing, in a rainbow-colored void of some kind. She hadn't the faintest idea where it was or what the void was even supposed to be, but the numerous iridescent colors made her eyes spin. On top of that, she could walk as if she had been on solid ground, despite it looked like she was in midair. It was all too much to take in.

At least she hadn't come alone, as the crystal coffin object had not only brought her to the strange new location, but also came with her. Or rather, perhaps it came here and dragged her along with it. It was hard to say...

But wouldn't that make it alive somehow? That metal sphere might be a living creature of some kind that only looks like a machine. Rita mused, trying to come up with some kind of working hypothesis. It always bothered her when she couldn't make heads or tails of new discoveries. Still, this "new discovery" was responsible for hurtling her to some weird place and separating her from Flynn all together. She wasn't sure what she should do to get out of her predicament. I wonder, maybe if I hit this thing with a spell arte, it could send me back. Ugh, stupid thing, just where in the heck did you send me anyway?!

Rita then turned to look angrily at the object and starting preparing magic, which came as a shock to her initially when she tested it out earlier upon waking in the mysterious void. Somehow her blastia was functioning here, something that shouldn't be at all possible, since defeating the Adephagos back in her world required sacrificing the energy in all of Terca Lumireis's blastia in order to annihilate it. Whether it might have had something to do with either being in contact with the crystal coffin or being in the void didn't concern her, she just wanted to go back home. She could think about it later, in the comfort of familiar surroundings.

"Damage Magna Quartz in any way, and I will make you pay for it," a voice suddenly spoke. Rita got spooked and stopped her incantation.

"Who's there?!" She demanded, looking around, trying to find the source of the voice. All she could see in any direction was void, void and more void. Looking at all the numerous colors in such rapid swerves was bringing on a wave of nausea she didn't need. "Damn it, who are you?!" Rita screamed.

"I am..." Swirling traces of blue energy began forming near Magna Quartz and took the form of something humanoid, but the silhouette quickly adopted an unusual shape. It became roundish in the back, like some sort of shell, and the head grew two small stalks pointing upward. "...Crystal Snail."

"What the..." Rita now had another shock to add to her expanding list.

Energen Crystal Mine...

Rita wasn't the only one getting an eyeful of surprises today. It was enough that the Hunters were dealing with a foe who was originally part of the 6th Naval Unit, but now they had unexpected help from a friend among a very large group whom they had traveled with across numerous worlds and dimensions previously.

"I don't believe it. Flynn, what are you doing here?" X was flabbergasted.

"Maybe we should deal with these foes first before we start chatting!" The dutiful knight declared as he slashed his sword through a couple of enemy Reploids who were trying to attack him.

"What's this? You Hunters have help...from a human?! Haha, that's rich!" Amblygonite Hydra's first head laughed rather insanely at the very notion.

"Hmph. You idiot," Zero said, as he regained his stance after having been hit by Hydra's surprise attack from earlier, "I'd advise you not to underestimate this particular human."

"What?" The second head, Two, got a good look at Flynn, wondering just what the big deal was with him. "Feh, I don't see what's so special about him."

"That's your problem. You're only seeing. He's one of many humans trained in powerful fighting styles and we've witnessed his abilities firsthand. He can rip Mavericks apart just as well as any Hunter can. You'd do well to remember that." Zero pointed his Z-Saber at the Maverick with his usual poker face. X realized that his good friend and partner was trying to shift the fight in their favor with a combination of psychological tactics and outright intimidation. He decided to follow up with his own clever words.

"Yes Hydra, Zero isn't lying. He knocked you and your troops aside easily. Do you really think he can't handle you if he's capable of doing that in just one strike?" The Maverick Hunter said, hoping this would buy enough time until the backup arrived. Hydra, surprisingly, was humbled by the facts being given and did recall feeling an intense bit of force from the vacuum wave that interrupted him. Of course, like any Maverick prone to violence, he didn't want to accept the fact a human was strong enough to do such a thing, much less a human doing such a thing at all.

"Damn it, it doesn't matter! If you want to die alongside the Hunters so badly, then so be it! I'll be happy to send you to your death!" Hydra's heads turned to look at Flynn and hiss monstrously at the Imperial Knight. In response, the blonde-haired swordsman leapt over to X and Zero's position and readied himself.

"You won't have to worry about any further reinforcements. I took care of the problem once I realized that they were heading here from the other room." Flynn said to them as he began chanting First Aid to heal the injured Reploids.

"Other room? I see, so he was getting backup from a different section. This cave isn't as sealed up as we believed, X." Zero mused as the light of Flynn's arte recovered the damaged area.

"Yeah..." X thought back to the past again. All that kept surfacing in his mind was images of Crystal Snail's death, playing over and over again like some horrid torture video. He had been terrified of dying then, and out of fear he completely annihilated his opponent when he was just trying to understand him.

If only it could have been different. If only I could have...

"X, be careful!" Flynn's voice alerted him to Hydra's approach.

Damn, I can't afford to be distracted right now!

At that moment, a standoff between the four combatants in the cavern was inevitable. Buster, beam saber and knight sword drawn on one side, seven snapping and hissing heads on the other. In one fluid movement, they clashed too quickly for any observer to see.

Unknown area...

The initial shock of Crystal Snail's appearance had passed Rita's mind quickly enough. She'd seen plenty of unusual beings in her own world. Still, she had never seen anything or anyone quite like him. She recalled Yuri, Estelle and Flynn mention the large group of people they had traveled with when they had suddenly vanished from Halure one day out of the blue. There were two among that team who were called Reploids, and they were people built to look like humans, but were made of metal. Rita found that hard to believe at first back then. However, looking upon Crystal Snail, her doubts were washing away rather quickly.

Crystal Snail looked at the human girl who had dared to get it into her head to attack Magna Quartz. He kept himself close to his precious friend, caressing it as he had once before when he was "alive". Though he was elated to finally be with Magna Quartz somewhere they would never be bothered, he kept wary of Rita, wondering how she had even ended up here. He was also surprised someone else would even manage to find their "secret world" like this. What could have happened?

"Um, excuse me, Crystal Snail? May I ask you something?" Rita chimed in.

"What is it?" He remained wary of her.

"I wasn't trying to hurt Magna Quartz. I was just...frustrated at my situation. I don't know where I am right now and how to get back. You see, it was because of that crystal that I ended up here in the first place from my world." She explained. Her words surprised Snail; he hadn't considered that Quartz could be responsible, especially when he recalled his precious friend vanished some time ago and suddenly returned. He had assumed that his crystalline companion had been sent to a random location nearby by the void's power, not to another world of all places.

"So you're from another realm too? Magna Quartz and I are not originally from here either. Tell me then, who are you and what world do you hail from? Is it Earth?"

"I'm Rita Mordio, and I'm not from Earth. I come from a world called Terca Lumireis. Magna Quartz was the one who brought me here. You see, it was found in a cavern in my world that consists entirely of similar-looking crystals. A friend of mine and I were called in to investigate it, but just as we were simply standing around making inquiries and theories, a huge flash of light erupted from the crystal...and I found myself here afterward."

Crystal Snail took some time to soak up Rita's story and was quite shocked that his dear beautiful Quartz could even do such a thing. He had no idea his friend had that level of power. The mollusk Reploid mulled it over for a while and could tell the girl was not hostile nor was she trying to hurt Magna Quartz. He realized that his wariness was a product of the paranoia he felt when he felt himself to be nothing more than an ugly creature back on Earth.

"Actually, I...knew what it's like not to have anyone else. I used to keep myself locked away in my house with only my blastia. I didn't trust others either, because they misused blastia and hurt them to make things work for them." Rita said, almost with no thought as to why she was telling this newfound stranger anything about her personal life. Her words surprised Snail, who listened carefully. "One day, a certain person wanted to be my friend and everything changed. She was genuinely the first person to ever care about what I thought or how I felt. Another human being actually cared about me and that's when my life changed. I journeyed with her and her friends, and she helped me realize that shutting myself away wasn't the the best use of my time. I met all kinds of kooks and weirdos along the way," Rita's expression changed as she said this, "but I would never have seen the rest of the world if I'd just remained locked away in Aspio. It's still hard to trust some kinds of people out there, but being mistrustful all the time is...painful."

Crystal Snail sensed the sincerity in the human's words. They echoed his own situation quite well. He knew what he had been like back on Earth: a recluse, a hermit, unable to care about anything other than Magna Quartz and only capable of becoming concerned about anything when it involved his precious friend. The mollusk Reploid knew he had to face this dark side of himself at some point, otherwise he felt he would never be worthy of being Quartz's protector.

"It seems we are kindred spirits in that sense, Rita Mordio. I too was alone in the world. I hated my own ugliness, and I was unable to see past it. Magna Quartz was all I had and the only one who truly represented what little beauty I could see in my existence. I wanted nothing else...and no one else. But one day, I lost my good friend and I gave in to my despair. I died that day..." Snail sighed at length, thinking back to the day Maverick Hunter X appeared and brought an end to his life after shattering the crystalline defense unit. "Somehow, what remained of my 'soul', if you can say Reploids have such a thing, was guided here by something. I know not what, but Quartz was brought here too and I was happy to see my friend. Since then, we have spent our eternity here together." He again caressed his companion, taking comfort in the fact that he was not alone in such a strange dimension.

Rita realized the two of them indeed were very alike, but at least she had had her eyes opened by Estelle. Snail, on the other hand, had spent his existence torturing himself with thoughts of being ugly, despite the warmth he derived from his contact with Magna Quartz. She felt as if she should do something to help, but she wasn't sure exactly what her plan was at the moment.

Great, I'm turning into Estelle. She thought to herself with her arms crossed. "I think we should try to find a way to get out of here."

"A way out?" Snail looked at her with astonishment. "I've been trying for the longest time to see if this void has an exit of some kind leading to somewhere else, but alas, it all looks the same."

"How about if we can get Magna Quartz to help us escape. It is has the power to transport between worlds, right?"

"After what you've told me so far, it would appear so, but what triggers the warp?"

"That's...the part I don't quite know yet." Rita admitted she was stumped at the moment. She had no idea what had caused the large crystal to react the way it did back in the Erealumen Crystallands cavern. She recalled the metal orb encased within the gigantic crystal and how its red central "eye" bended light in such an unusual way. "I think it had something to do with that." As the mage of Aspio pointed at the spherical mechanism that governed the control of the crystal itself, she walked toward it and squinted to get a better look inside. Snail observed with her, and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"That is simply the core processing device that handles all of its functions, Rita. It's similar to a brain, essentially."

"Ah I see, but I wonder what caused it to..." Before Rita could finish her sentence, an all-too familiar sound began to stir.

"Dear friend, what is it?" Crystal Snail asked, putting his hand on the crystal before a blinding white light engulfed everything.

Terca Lumireis, in the imperial capital of Zaphias...

Brave Vesperia, along with the Imperial Knights, had been in a tizzy trying to figure out what had happened to Rita and Flynn. When the news had been brought back by Joshua Crim and the survey team, it shocked everyone, particularly Yuri and Estelle. They were gripped with the fear that the Portalstone was out of control again.

"But Yuri," Estelle started as she reviewed the report Joshua brought back, "how could it be the Portalstone when it was that weird crystal that transported them away?"

"Did you forget about how water was behaving the same as gateways when the stone was dispersing all the worlds' boundaries, like the fountain at Mii's mansion?" Yuri said as he took his seat at the large round table everyone was present at as they wondered what they could do. "It's possible the Portalstone could affect solid objects too."

"Even if we knew where that big crystal took them, how would we even follow them?" Karol, the twelve year old appointed boss of Brave Vesperia, spoke up.

"He's right. For starters, there's just no tellin' where they could have been whisked away too." Raven, the sleepy-eyed "old man", said as he put his chin on his hand. "It's not like we have any way of knowin' just which world they were flung to, or if both of them even ended up in the same one."

"Considering how many different places you and Estelle were thrown around to during that whole escapade, and the possibility there are countless other worlds you hadn't yet seen, finding them by guessing alone is going to be impossible." Judith, the Krityan who was always one to make witty quips in even the most unique circumstances, stated as she folded her arms. From outside the building, the party could hear Ba'ul making a low almost distressed croon. "Ba'ul is worried about them."

Repede, Yuri's trusted canine companion, whined his concern too.

"We all are. Flynn and Rita are members of Brave Vesperia, and we can't just let this slide without first figuring out a way to help them." Yuri said resolutely. Just then the door opened with a slam; at the entrance was one of the knights.

"Princess Estellise, there's something you need to see!" He said, panic apparent in his tone.

"What is it?" She rose to her feet and immediately went outside, the rest of the team hot on her heels. The knight guided them to the upper quarter of the capital where a crowd of people had been gathered around someone. Shouts of "He just suddenly appeared!" and "There was this big flash of light!" rose above the murmurs and mutters of the citizens.

"Everyone, please make way for Princess Estellise!" Some of the knights who had been patrolling the walkway where everyone was trying to get a look announced so the people could make some room for Brave Vesperia. When the heroes of Terca Lumireis got a gander at just what warranted the eyes and ears of so many of the townspeople, they were taken aback to say the least. Sitting on the ground before them was a humanoid snail of some kind, made entirely of a metal that was not identifiable to anyone.

"Yuri, doesn't he remind you of...?" Estelle was about to say, but Yuri crouched down almost immediately to look at the newcomer more closely.

"You're a Reploid aren't you? Like X and Zero?"

"Yes I am. But this isn't Earth, is it?" Crystal Snail asked.

To be continued...