Riiiiiiiiinnnnnnnggggggg
With an instinctive move of his hand, he hit the snooze button of his alarm clock without getting out of his bed, before proceeding to get out of it anyway.
It's the start of yet another day for one Vech Verita the journalist.
His morning routine is pretty average: wake up, clean up, get dressed, and then have breakfast. Though he doesn't do that last one at home.
So after getting dressed, it's off to the place where he usually has his breakfast...
...
Cafe Luminiferous may not be the best cafe in town, but it is still Vech's favorite cafe to have his breakfast at.
His breakfast at the cafe, as it has always been, buttered crumpets with a side of scrambled eggs, along with a cup of coffee. Nothing special, really.
Just as Vech was about to take the first sip of his coffee, he was interrupted by someone dropping a newspaper on his table.
"Hey, Vech!" An excited voice immediately assaulted his ears, coming from the young woman who dropped the newspaper. "Check out what I wrote for today's morning headline!" The owner of the voice continued, with her mouth basically rapid-firing her words one after another.
That excitable voice is unmistakable to Vech. In fact, it has been in every day of his life for a long time already.
"Calm down, Hattie." Vech calmly told the young woman. "We as journalists should not be excited for our own articles."
"I know! But since when do any journalist in the Kingdom of Windar ever get to have a face-to-face interview with Her Majesty?!" The young woman, apparently named Hattie, rapid-fired her response. "Last I checked, it has been over a century since someone last interviewed a Queen of our nation!"
Hattie Shale. A fellow journalist of Vech's that has a personality as excitable as her pink hair would suggest and is always very passionate about her job. Her excitable personality led to her always speaking so quickly her mouth is basically like a machine gun of words. Most people would take a while before they get used to her.
But for Vech, that is just how he expected his childhood friend - now girlfriend - to always act.
"Consider that a career achievement, then." Vech congratulated Hattie. "But are you actually planning to go a step further? Because I don't think it is possible to go bigger than an interview with Her Majesty..."
"Says the one who covered an interdimensional incursion before!" Hattie interrupted Vech by playfully pointing out.
Vech raised an eyebrow curiously. It is obvious to him what his colleague-slash-girlfriend is thinking. "So, you're saying that you plan to go further... by going as far as I once did?" He asked her.
"Of course I am!" Hattie responded excitedly as usual before sitting down at the opposite side of Vech's table. "But when that's going to happen is out of anyone's control, because even with the Windarian Armed Forces having formed an international coalition for countering it..." She slowed down her speech for once.
"An interdimensional incursion is still a very rare occurrence." Vech continued the sentence for Hattie. "And normally, people would rather not have a bloody interdimensional incursion happen, period." He then bluntly stated.
Hearing that, Hattie let out a defeated sigh. "That's a good point, actually." She conceded. "But then how else am I going to write eye-catching articles?!" She quickly raised another topic, throwing her hands up for emphasis for a brief moment before putting them down. "If only I developed the ability to manipulate wind rather than ice. Then I'd be able to fly around and get any scoop I wanted..." She mumbled under her breath.
"You don't." Vech responded without a change in expression. "Because we as Windarian journalists write only the truth. It is entirely because of coincidence that we had articles that were both eye-catching and completely tru-"
The male of the duo stopped when he noticed something strange happening in the sky. Hattie, wondering why Vech suddenly paused, turned to look at the same direction.
All of Cafe Luminiferous' staffs and other customers also noticed the strange occurrence, as did every single people on the streets at the time.
"What is that?"
"Is it a weather event?"
"Someone experimenting with magic?"
"Could it be another interdimensional incursion?"
"Are we in danger?!"
Soon, people on the streets - and everywhere else for that matter - started commenting on the strange occurrence and theorizing on what it could be. Some had begun to panic at the prospect of it being something potentially dangerous or catastrophic.
"Well, time to get to work, I guess..." Vech commented as he got up and placed the payment for today's breakfast on his table. "And it looks like you're going to get further with tomorrow's headline, after all..."
As the journalist duo left their table and ran off to catch a taxi, a pair of opposite sex twins stood among the many Windarian citizens that have turned their attention toward the sky.
"I have a bad feeling about this, Aether."
"Well, what's your call, Lumine?"
...
By the time Vech and Hattie arrived at their destination (with Vech giving the cabbie a handful of money and telling him to keep the change), the strange occurrence in the sky has transformed into a giant ring made of stark white marble decorated by bronze-colored wing-shaped bits on the four cardinal directions. In other words, a portal, and it is clearly a creation of some interdimensional being.
"Vech, are we... at a military base?!" Hattie expressed surprise at where her colleague-slash-boyfriend had taken her to.
"Just in time to find out that the thing in the sky is something that'd have grabbed the military's attention, anyway!" Vech told his colleague-slash-girlfriend as he basically pulled her toward the entrance of the base. "And don't worry! My crew and I have the necessary clearance to enter!"
...
Meanwhile, as Vech used his clearance to get him and Hattie into the military base, another car soon pulled up at the same spot where the journalist duo's taxi dropped them off.
One of the four occupants of the car - a woman with short, snow white hair and wearing a military uniform - got off and closed the door all in the span of two seconds, showing how she is in a hurry.
"Mummy, where are you going?" A little girl with a similar snow white hair tied into a ponytail and wearing a green dress poked her head out of one of the rear door of the car. "Are you going to save the world?"
The woman paused for a bit in spite of the urgency, before turning around to approach the little girl and look her in the eyes. "Yes, Nella. Mummy's going to help save the world..." She answered.
"Then I want you to beat the bad guys so hard, they can't take a dook-dook for weeks!" The little girl, Nella, encouraged.
The woman, little Nella's mother, can't help but chuckle at her daughter's childishly worded encouragement. "Thank you, my Little Radish. Now I want you to stay close with your Aunt Eden and Cousin Themine until I get back, okay?" She then told her.
"I will, mummy! I will!" Nella responded before retreating back into the car.
With that, the woman turned to head for the military base...
"Rhea, wait!" Another woman suddenly called out to her. This one, currently seated at the driver's seat of the car, has dark hair and is dressed in a three-piece suit.
The first woman, now identified as Rhea, paused before turning back to the car once again, this time looking at the driver. "I'm in a hurry, Eden. Please make this quick..." She said.
The driver, Eden, sighed before giving her response. "Please be careful, Rhea. I have a very bad feeling about this..."
Rhea didn't have much of an emotional reaction to this. "I work for the military, Eden. We always have a bad feeling about what we'll be doing." She responded somberly. "But rest assured, I will be back, because-"
"We of House Lestrade never break our promises." Rhea and Eden both said at the same time.
And with that, Rhea left the scene, heading straight for the military base as her duties called.
Did I just write a Genshin Impact fanfic despite having said that I have no plans to? Yeah, I just did. Guess there is more to the Genshin rabbit hole than it seems, after all.
Anyway, this story will be breaking my usual format in that it'd star an OC instead of the canon protagonist of the work, in this case Aether as the Traveler. However, Aether will still be one of the main characters and will still be doing most of the work (in the Archon Quests, at least).
Also, this chapter is just part one of the prologue. Hopefully I can finish the prologue by the next chapter...
And don't worry. I have no plans of abandoning my other stories. I am going to continue writing them and will be posting new chapters for them in the near future.
Yeah, Hattie being a pink-haired journalist that speaks very fast and wished to have developed wind powers instead of ice powers is an intentional similarity to a certain someone from Genshin. So is Nella saying "dook-dook" and being addressed as "Little Radish". Multiversal shenanigans, perhaps? Who knows?
Afterword ends here.