This whole story came out of the opening scene: The first dream. The sequence just popped into my head, italics and all, and I jotted it down. Later, I built the first chapter around that. And that sat around for a few months.
Eventually, I got bored, so I dug it up and constructed a story around it. Or, to be more precise, I came up with an ending for the story. I had chapter one and chapter six onwards planned out. Now I just needed to fill in the middle.
I borrowed quite a bit from other stories I'd plotted out that never saw my screen for this. All the combatants in the Big Multi-Combatant Fight Scene of Doom, for example were from a previous story, as was the ending, which was in turn SHAMELESSLY lifted from Gladiator. I'm a bad, bad man.
The first five chapters were written in the space of a few weeks, once I returned to the story...and then promptly abandoned again. A few months later, I returned to it, read what I'd written and asked myself "Why did I write this garbage?"
Some extensive rewriting followed.
The result is what you see before you.
About halfway through this story I conceived the idea of expanding this into a series of stories. Not all starring Ness, mind you. I ran the idea past myself a couple times, and I've decided to do either a five or a six part series. The first four(or five) stories would be mutually exclusive; They'd have common elements, most specifically Mahna, but they would all reside in their own universe where things are completely different. For example, the story about Paula can't coexist with this one, because in the Paula story, Paula's ALIVE and she never married Ness. Then the last story will tie them all together. There'll be one story for each of the Chosen Four, and then POSSIBLY one for Tracy, depending on how I decide, and then one last story that involves all four and Tracy.
I'd like to thank Earthboud Fanfiction Reviews for giving me such a nice review. I'd also like to thank all the nice reviewers. You guys all rock.