The False Apocalypse

Book 1: A New Beginning

Chapter Three

Lost In Reality

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Disclaimer: I do not own any of the worlds or characters from the crossovers. If I did I would be working on them and not this. The original characters and world in the first chapter are however of my own creation.

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"Excuse me, are you alright?" A female voice said behind Nightscythe, sounding oddly familiar. She had clearly just entered the room having heard him moving. The voice was certainly not in English though he recognized it easily. His time in black ops taught him quite a few languages. Japanese happened to be one of the ones he learned more thoroughly thanks to the number of training missions he ran in conjunction with the Japanese Self Defense Force.

"Japanese… well that makes it official I'm in Japan. Son of a bitch I'm in JAPAN!" Nightscythe threw his arms up in the air and punched the wooden floor in annoyance at the revelation. Of all the things Wedge could have developed how the hell did he manage to make a time machine? What was worse, how the hell did he manage to make one capable of throwing him onto the opposite side of the planet?

"I'm sorry… do you speak Japanese?" The mysterious boy was obviously perturbed by something though she didn't have a clue what that was. Actually that was the first time she had ever even heard English before. The woman clearly hoped he understood. It was bad enough having to pull some kid out of some kind of wrecked pod near your shed. An inability to communicate at all would make figuring out what happened nearly impossible. They would likely have to contact the local police to locate a translator.

"Yes, sorry but where am I exactly? I know its Japan but…?" Nightscythe asked in Japanese, struggling just a little to remember the words he learned years ago. They came quickly enough, much to his relief and the woman's. His Japanese was certainly not the most fluent she had heard but it was certainly adequate. At this point Nightscythe was attempting to gain as much information as possible. Clearly he had been taken in somewhere. He assumed something had knocked him out; though at the moment he was unsure of how long. Taking in his generally bland surroundings he noticed that this woman wore a purple though traditional Japanese yukata. Her hair was long and black as was traditional in old Japan. One thing that struck him as peculiar though was her blue eyes. While not entirely uncommon in modern society, especially Japan; the traditional surroundings meant he was likely a bit further back in time than anticipated. Possibly a LOT further back than anticipated. If that was so then the eye color was quite strange. Oh how Nightscythe hoped that he was just in a historical district.

"You're in Tokyo; we found you in some wreckage outside my family dojo. I'm Kaoru Kamiya by the way… Kenshin, Yahiko stop hiding behind the door!" The woman snapped as soon as she sensed the eavesdroppers' presence. Were she not so frightening the reaction would have been rather comical.

"Yes mam!" In an instant both men scooted around the door and knelt upon the freshly polished floor. Both were quite curious about the silver haired boy they found. It wasn't often one found steel wreckage on your property, even rarer when the wreckage contained a living child. To their knowledge silver hair was certainly not normal for children; in fact the boy looked very out of place. As they slept last night, everyone in the Kamiya family dojo woke to an enormous crash. At the time it sounded like cannon fire and everyone rushed outside, prepared for battle. It was a relief to find no attack but rather some strange wreckage. His clothes were by far the most outlandish they had ever seen. Large enough to fit someone three times the boy's size and of some leather like material. It was difficult to describe exactly. Knowing those clothes would do him no good they put him in an extra set of Yahiko's clothes, much to his dismay.

"This is Kenshin and Yahiko. They pulled you out of that – thing you were in." Kaoru introduced and the two men gave their own short greetings. At hearing those names and seeing those faces however, Alden was in no shape to answer. The appearance of the two made matters worse, much worse. Kenshin was short, just a bit over 1.5 meters but his long red hair and cross shaped scar on his left cheek were quite distinctive. Though pink as a sakura petal one could tell from his attire and the way Kenshin held himself that he was clearly a Samurai of the highest caliber. Yahiko on the other hand was obviously a child of twelve or so. His dark hair was spikey and wild while his yellow kimono had clearly been patched more times than not. It was impossible not to recognize these people.

"… But - That - that's impossible" Alden's eyes grew wide and his breathing heavy. 'No, NO this can't be happening. That - I've lost it. I can't be talking to them. There's no way in hell.' His eyes widened in shock, unable to believe who it was he was seeing. A time machine was hard enough to believe. This on the other hand, was on an entirely different level. It was madness, that or the weirdest trip he had ever been on.

"What's impossible?" Yahiko replied, somewhat disturbed by the sheer level of disbelief he was seeing. Quite frankly Yahiko himself had a far more measured reaction to Kenshin being the Battousai, the legendary manslayer of all things!

"You – them... You can't be real. You - you can't be, can you? ... Yet, you look the same…" Look the same, they certainly did; there were differences of course but the resemblance was uncanny. They looked far more real than anything Alden had seen in the comics or the show for that matter. All the features however, were plain as day. Studying his surroundings for just a moment Alden could only come to one conclusion.

"I'm dreaming; that has to be it. Everything makes so much more sense now." Half laughing at the revelation, Alden smiled. 'Of course there was no time machine; that would be ridiculous. Clearly I've just had a rough day. Quite frankly it's been a rough week. I probably got ahold of some bad meat, went to bed and now I'm having the weirdest, most vivid dream in years.' Yes, that had to be it. There was no other explanation. It all made far too much sense. Why else would he be seeing characters from a hundred year old manga?

"The same as what?" Kaoru asked, her head tilted slightly to her left. Alden however, did not respond to the question and continued to look around. Honestly, what was the point in replying to a dream? Only moments later he waved his hand aside and gave himself a strong smack across the face. In the short moment between recognizing the pain he felt and blinking in confusion he was quite roughly tackled to the ground by an irate Yahiko.

"The hell are you doing, dumbass!" Yahiko screamed from on top of the silver haired boy whom he shook by the collar as violently as he could. Still Alden paid him little mind. He was lost in the fact that he felt pain in a dream; that was not supposed to happen. Sure you could feel fear or happiness in a dream but pain? Something was wrong here and none of it made any sense. Could he really be in the place he was seeing? It was impossible of course, but here he was.

"Yahiko, STOP this instant!" Kaoru screamed, horrified at what Yahiko was doing. While clearly out of it, this boy had been through enough already. He clearly didn't need to add any kind of injury to the list. "Seriously, who taught you your manners?" The crime syndicate they saved him from certainly didn't try very hard, that much was certain. Kaoru soon grabbed Yahiko by the ear and drug him off of the silver haired boy who seemed to shell-shocked to have even realized what was happening.

"You really should try to calm yourself; that you should." Kenshin added, ruffling the kid's hair after Kaoru dropped Yahiko right next to him. The dark haired boy was not very receptive of the action and fought to regain control of his hair. If there was one he hated above all else it was being treated like a little kid. He was the son of a Samurai after all.

'It can't be a dream' Alden realized much to his fear. Thank God he had taken the 'cure' recently or that parasite would have been tugging at the back of his mind. He now hoped that this was all some very strange dream but knew that it wasn't possible. Everything that was happening was far too vivid even ignoring the issue of pain. Looking down at his hands Alden stared in disbelief only to notice yet another thing that was off; his hands were small. Blinking purposefully, he hoped that they would return to normal size. Much to his continued dismay, they didn't.

"Forgive Yahiko, he can be very impulsive; that he can." Kenshin requested calmly. This boy was getting stranger by the minute. Whether or not they found any answers he certainly hoped the boy would be ok. With the way the body stared down at his hands it seemed that this event was about to get even stranger. That was until the silver haired boy shook his head and lowered his hands, determined not to look at them anymore.

"What is your name anyway; you're certainly not from around here?" Kaoru surmised, the boy obviously didn't have an ounce of Japanese blood.

"Oh sorry, I guess you can call me… All…" 'I know what Wedge said, but what could it matter now? Either this is all a dream or I'm lost in another reality. Humph… another reality…' "I'm Alden Nayel."

"Ah – Aru-den Na-ye-ru?" Kaoru replied, having never heard such a strange name before. The name was actually quite difficult to pronounce in Japanese, at least the way it should be pronounced.

"Ha what kind of name is that! Seriously you had to make that up on the spot to come up with something so stupid!" Yahiko screamed as was usual loudmouth and expressive nature.

"You shouldn't be so rude to our gests Yahiko; that you should not." 'Still, why would a kid have to make up a name? Must be in some sort of trouble, poor kid.' Kenshin thought to himself. Still he was quite young himself when he became an assassin. It was difficult for him of all people to judge.

"If you're not going to listen to me than at least listen to Kenshin, Yahiko. I'm sure he's had a rough time as it is. After we found him in that metal thing last night, well I'm sure he has his reasons for making up a name." Alden's eyes widened at the mention of a 'metal thing.' 'Oh God what I'd give to be back home right now. Wedge you were just too damn smart for your own damn good. On the other hand I'm not on the receiving end of the apocalypse.' Well, at least there was some good to come from this awkward situation.

"Look, I didn't make up the name. I'm just not from Japan." Alden replied mater-o-factly. 'Or this time for that matter.' "Most people don't exactly call me by my real name anymore."

"Then what does everyone call you?" Kaoru asked honestly, what was the point in telling people a name you didn't use.

"Aside from it being difficult to translate, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Hell I can barely believe what's going on."

"Then tell us and let us decide! We did save you, you know." Yahiko did have a bit of a point there. From the sounds of it they found him in his wreaked time machine. Though Alden hadn't seen it yet, it certainly did sound like it wasn't in that great a shape. The fact that he had been unconscious for a while was proof of that.

"Right, so you want me to tell you that I'm an assassin from the future, sent to stop the apocalypse. Then I suppose you want me to tell you that I recognize you from a hundred year old CARTOON!" Alden replied, his voice dripping with a mixture of annoyance and sarcasm. Though he meant every word he could still hardly believe it himself.

"Uh, what's a cartoon and why would anyone send a kid back in time?" Yahiko asked, completely confused by the outburst. Kids weren't assassins and time travel was… well it was time travel. Anyone who believed that kind of story needed mental help of the serious variety.

"What do you mean 'who would send a…' you saw that too then?" This new revelation solidified in Alden's mind how real the tiny hand he had seen earlier really was. At first he brushed it off as being way too sleepy for his own good. If they could see it too then his situation was far worse than he had imagined. He stood wordlessly and began to walk through the dojo.

"Where's he going?" Yahiko asked. Everything this kid seemed to do just got weirder and weirder.

"I don't know but I think we need to keep an eye on him." Kaoru replied; she now knew something beyond weird was happening and it had her concerned. Kenshin was having similar thoughts; he knew he heard the word assassin correctly. True or not, a kid who believed he was an assassin was going to be trouble. If the boy honestly believed he was preventing the end of the world, it would be difficult to dissuade him from attempting whatever assassinations he may have had planned. With all three of them in agreement they set out to follow the kid to wherever he was going. Hopefully the boy's destination wasn't far. It was much to their relief that Alden only went out to their well. How exactly he knew where it was, well that was beyond them?

As Kenshin and the group came up behind Alden the saw him staring into a bucket of water he had drawn high enough to make out his reflection. About the time they were within earshot they noticed he was already speaking to himself.

"…Biggest fuckup ever. This trumps your bachelor's party, Wedge; oh it trumps it by a loooong shot. I admit you tried to save us, but how the hell am I supposed to work with this. You overshot the time period by two centuries; bad, devastating really, but a reasonable mistake considering how experimental it was. To make things worse, I'm in some alternate reality where cartoons exist. I don't even know what to say about that! Oh, and to top it all off, I'm twelve fucking years old…" Alden stood in silence, staring down at his image. He was far shorter than the nearly 1.8 meters he had grown to in adulthood. What the hell was he supposed to do with a twelve year old body? Worse, the odds that he could rebuild the time machine were… low to say the least. Even if Alden managed to find the parts he would likely need, in the 1800's of all places; he would have no idea whether it would send him home or into yet another even stranger dimension. Clearly some of Wedge's calculations had been off; how much it would take for this result was another story.

Kenshin and his friends simply stood watch over the boy who seemed to be spouting nonsense. This Alden boy had clearly hit his head far harder than anticipated.

"You should go get Dr. Gensai; that you should." Kenshin whispered to Yahiko. This boy was going to need help and he wasn't sure even Gensai could offer what he needed.

"You must think I'm so crazy right now." Alden spoke to them before Yahiko even had a chance to respond to Kenshin's request. "I can hardly believe it myself and everything I've ever known is gone. Poof, like a powder keg." Spreading his fingers to imitate an explosion above the well, Alden turned and sat on the edge.

"What makes you think you're from the future?" Kaoru asked, her voice held genuine concern for the boy, yet at the same time it held a rather high level of disbelieve that this was even happening. Most crazy people didn't get this crazy, and certainly not at that young an age.

"Does this hair look natural to you; it shouldn't, not on a twelve year old? Where I'm from we can manipulate people's bodies to make that sort of thing natural." Alden replied, like the explanation would the most natural thing in the world. It did feel a bit weird to him though, wording genetics like that, using such simple language.

"You said something about being an assassin. I think you should start there; that you should." Kenshin inquired about what little he had gathered from the boy's ramblings. It was an urgent concern of Kenshin's. Little boy or not, they needed to know if he was a threat and determine where to go from there.

"Don't worry, Himura; I'm not here to kill you or your leaders. I was only supposed to go back in time a couple years, not centuries. The people I'm worried about won't be born till long after your great grandchildren are dead and gone." While Yahiko and Kaoru hadn't noticed the one thing truly off in the statement, Kenshin certainly had.

"Kaoru dono never mentioned my family name; that she didn't." Kenshin pointed out, much to Alden's amusement.

"Of course you didn't and the reason I know that is the same reason I know your real name isn't Kenshin either. Your master gave you that name. He said Shinta was too soft for a swordsman." Now that statement above all others had shocked Kenshin to no end. NOBODY knew that name. His Master Hiko Seijuro was the only person to ever know that. Not even Tomoe knew that little piece of Kenshin's past. It had certainly shocked Kaoru and Yahiko as well; they soon turned to Kenshin for an answer.

"How did you...?" Kenshin trailed off, unsure of how to respond. He tried a few more times to express a coherent thought but failed miserably. Of all the secrets Kenshin had, that was the one he long intended to take to the grave.

"Oh, I know many things about you Kenshin, like how you got your scar." Alden emphasized by pointing at the offending leftover of war. In truth, it was far more complicated than that.

"Enough, how do you know all this?" Kenshin replied, somewhat angry at his personal information being displayed so openly. The lack of his verbal tick, more than Kenshin's tone told Alden it was time to back off of that particular subject. That piece of information had truly struck a nerve with the pacifist of a swordsman.

"That – will be a little hard to explain. Nearly every bit of technology responsible for that does not yet exist." At this Yahiko choked out a laugh. To him it was one hell of a copout answer.

"I suppose the simplest answer is that, in the future we spend much more time being entertained than you do today. Reading and… watching stories is a major part of modern culture. I don't know how but I can only assume that the author of a series called 'Rurouni Kenshin' had some kind of connection to the events of this world. He wrote an entire story about your life."

"Wait, you're telling me that Kenshin is the main character of some kind of story?" Yahiko stated in disbelief. The entire idea was truly laughable. On the other hand, the kid did know things about Kenshin that he clearly didn't want anyone to know.

"Let's say I believe you; you said you're an assassin, why?" Kenshin replied, not particularly satisfied with the answer but knowing full well that it was the only answer he was going to get.

"That's not what you're asking. You want to know why a kid would be an assassin. For starters, so were you. Secondly, I'm thirty-eight. Why the hell Wedge's time machine regressed my age, I don't know. If I did, I likely wouldn't be here right now."

"That still doesn't answer why; that it does not." Kenshin relaxed noticeably at the answer. Though he still seemed a bit perturbed.

"The world I'm from has devolved into chaos. We tried saving ourselves from disaster but my brother sold us out. Thanks to him we are facing a genocide, the scale of which the world has never seen. Since my brother got us in this mess it is my duty to stop him." Alden replied firmly. Zereth had to be stopped at all costs. Being trapped in an alternate reality was frustrating to say the least.

"You want to kill your brother?" Kaoru asked, horrified by the thought. She never had any siblings but knew how close they should be. That was the sort of thing that shouldn't have to happen.

"Would you put down a rabid dog?" Alden replied without hesitation. That truly was the full extent of his feelings towards his brother at the moment. Zereth had become a monster among monsters. Kenshin's mind was elsewhere however.

"This genocide, how bad was it?" Kenshin asked seriously.

"Come on Kenshin you can't possibly believe this nonsense?" Yahiko tried to reason with the legendary samurai.

"He knows things only I should know; that he does. Unless he can read minds I see no alternative." Kenshin replied honestly.

"Still, that's impossible. Time travel can't exist." Kaoru added.

"That's what I thought yesterday." Alden commented offhandedly, drawing everyone's attention yet again.

"Look, Dr. Gensai is making dinner tonight so let's go inside and relax." Kaoru continued. The sun was starting to get high and they would much prefer the shade.

"Just stay to the porch. I haven't seen greenery this peaceful since the war started." Alden looked around at the trees that framed the traditional wooden structure of old Tokyo. It was a beautiful sight to take in. All he could remember from the last two years were caverns, missile craters and blood. There was so much blood. Kenshin nodded in agreement and moved into the shade of the porch alongside the dojo.

"If you want to know how bad it was, I'll tell you. All the world was a wasteland. Our enemies called themselves The Saviors and murdered everyone in their path. It didn't matter if they were women or children, everything just died. Last I heard, the war had already claimed the lives of nearly six billion people" Kaoru gasped in horror at the information while Kenshin's eyes were livid in anger with what humanity had brought upon itself. Meanwhile while Yahiko just looked at Alden dumbfounded.

"Are there even that many people on the planet?" Yahiko asked, surprised that there were that many people in existence.

"Now… no? In the next two hundred and fifty years or so, the world population should be nearing twelve Billion."

"But that's almost half!" Kaoru exclaimed, shocked by the sheer height of the numbers.

"Oh trust me, after their most recent plan I'm sure they will have it much lower. I have been fighting, developing better weapons to fight them, but their technology, their resources are just too great. There's only so much you can do with swords when your fighting machines the size of buildings. Even if my swords are capable of cleaving threw steel beams, even if we can become invisible, it's just too much. They called me Nightscythe. I was one of maybe twelve people with the courage to get in close enough for that kind of combat, and the strength to survive it. Time travel was a last ditch effort."

"I take it you plan to rebuild your machine?" Kenshin asked seriously, looking just beyond the edge of the dojo to the mangled wreckage of the time machine. It did not look to be in the best of shape.

"I doubt I could. It was built by the smartest person I ever knew. Even if I succeeded I would only have enough energy left for one more shot. I'll need time to think." Alden replied, standing and slowly walking towards the wreckage, clearly deep in thought. All the important parts seemed to be there, though bent all to hell. Judging from the size of the crater the machine likely appeared a few hundred meters into the sky. That kind of freefall wasn't exactly conducive to delicate machinery. How he wished Wedge was here to get them out of this mess. He stood, inspecting the wreckage to see what was salvageable but his mind was elsewhere.

"Damn it Wedge, why did you have to go and die!" Alden screamed, punching the mangled hatch with all his might and ignoring the blood that began to flow as readily as the tears from his eyes. The time traveler was going to need some time alone so Kenshin and his allies decided to give it to him. Kaoru of course wanted to go and wrap the wound before Genasi got there but Kenshin stopped her. There were some things people needed to work out for themselves, even if it meant just a little blood. As a warrior well versed in the art of battle, Kenshin understood this better than most. Kaoru had never seen a real battlefield; had never lost allies that were as close as brothers. True, she had lost her father and that carried its own weight. Still everything became different when you put your life in another's hands, battle after battle. It was the gruesome reality of war.

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Chapter Notes

Yes I am trying to keep the chapters a bit shorter than in the last version. I feel like each chapter tends to flow a bit better than before this way. At the moment my goal is between 5 and 8000 words per chapter, depending on flow of course. When it starts approaching 8-10000 and it looks like it may be longer I'll probably break it in half if there's a good place to do that.