Chapter 1 - Close To Home

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Cover Art By aldimaulana661 (Aldi) on Twitter.

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The Fatui and the Abyss Order, involved in the same mess. What a fucking wonderous day it truly is!

Despite the fact the two, major, factions were currently at odds, with the Fatui currently raiding an Abyss Lab, as it were, it still wasn't exactly a positive thing they were interacting. The last thing Teyvat needed was an all-out war between the Fatui and the Abyss Order.

On top of both factions wanting to get back at the Gods in their own special way.

"What in the name of the Archons would get these two at each other's throats?" Raoul thought as he observed the chaos of the battle below him.

Fatui operatives fought Abyss mages, and the like, inside the crowded halls of the lab ruins. It was difficult to discern who was winning because every time one faction pushed the other back, somewhere else in the facility it was the opposite. Every step gained was another lost elsewhere.

This fight was going nowhere fast right now.

"There has to be a prize of considerable value for these two to fight," Raoul thought, his eyes narrowed. "A prize that no doubt would be a problem in either of their hands."

Raoul, though, was at least intelligent enough to avoid pointless combat; it served no purpose if the two sides were already combating one another. He stuck to the rafters, ledges, and perches above. Not only getting a better view of the situation but it also allowed him to successfully sneak through the lab undetected.

Ignoring the intense combat below him Raoul pushed further into the ruined lab, intent on finding out exactly what all the fuse was over. Whatever was in this lad was clearly worth the effort.

Raouls' intel, by all accounts, stated the Fatui and the Abyss Order normally avoided each other, which was further confirmed by reports from his comrades across Teyvat. It didn't make sense for these two to be stepping on each other's toes.

"Whatever is in here must be important," Raoul thought as he jumped through a hole in the wall above a large doorway to enter the next room. "I need to make sure neither party gets their hands on it."

Raoul paused momentarily when he dropped to the floor of the massive room, much to his surprise he found the parts and bodies of automations and machines, much like the Ruin Guards and Ruin Hunters. It seemed like this room was for research as opposed to assembly, so whoever had been here originally had been taking apart machines and attempting to better understand them since many of the machines and parts were in a poor state.

Despite the dilapidated state though, it only took a quick glance to realize the lab had been used recently in a small manner. One of the ruin guard frames had been recently dismantled alongside another much smaller machine, one Raoul had never seen before during his travels across Teyvat.

"Very… simplistic in design, " Raoul noted as he moved the room, taking in the subtle details like rust gathered on many of the machines, as well as blood… "Red eyes, small but mobile frame. Is this some kind of small infantry unit?" He wondered. "No, the Ruin Guards do a better job as standard infantry. This is something else entirely."

Raoul took a closer look at the two recently tampered-with machine forms. It was clear to him that whoever dismantled the two frames had been experimenting with exchanging parts and mechanisms, perhaps looking to see how one may benefit the other.

It was… odd… to see that the small, unknown machine seemed far different internally than its larger ruin counterpart. It was as if they were constructed in two completely different ways.

"Different internal mechanism, outer shell is basic, unknown purpose for construction." Raoul rattled off in his head, "Seems like they were built by two different factions using two very differing methods." That raised an important question.

If the Khaenri'ans' didn't build it, then who did?

Raoul swiftly pulled a few pieces of the small machine apart and stored what he could with his magic. Something to look into at a later date, but for now there was more to this lab than just this little room. He had to move, and fast.

Raoul was quick to find another doorway, with a hole in the upper half of the door. He took off, leapt, and jumped through the hole. On the other side he was quick to climb to the rafters and roof supports above, trying to maintain some level of discretion.

As Raoul moved through the facility he came across lone Abyss Order mages, lectors, or heralds, it became abundantly clear that the Abyss Order had arrived here first and had been established before the Fatui had come onto the scene. For how long he couldn't say.

"Is the device almost powered?" An Abyss Lector asked one of its surrounding mages.

"It is! It is!" One of the mages sang next to the Lector. "We're minutes away from activation!"

Raoul paused, taking to a perch above the abyss members to better listen in. "Activation?" He thought, "Not good. I need to get into gear and shut this science project down."

Ignoring the members of the abyss below Raoul continued onward, following the logical path he was quick to find a way that descended further down into the depths below. A large hole opened up into a large cavern below, with multiple stairs leading further down into the facility.

Raoul peered down into the ruins below, a sense of unease washed over him causing him to grimace. His gut telling him just how… dreadful this place was. How…awful.

"This place has seen much evil," Raoul muttered to himself.

He might not have known exactly what went down here, but he could feel it. Sense it. This place screamed of pain and suffering, like it was haunted by tortured souls that just couldn't move on. Lingering around the epicenter of their combined pain.

It was gut-wrenching in a way.

But he pushed on.

Raoul lept from the roof above the hole, falling swiftly down past the stairways all the way to the bottom. He reached out to swing off a loose horizontal support and swung himself up atop a broken pillar.

Jumping from pillar to pillar Raoul avoided the few abyssal mages scattered about, preparing some kind of defenses for the incoming Fatui. Luckily for the infiltrator they hadn't been prepared for the likes of him. Few people were ever prepared for people like him and his comrades.

It took him less than five minutes to make his way to the deepest level of the facility, what greeted him didn't surprise him in the slightest. An open ruin space, remade into a lab. Lab equipment and other such strange devices decorated the room on various tables, but in the middle of the room was what looked like an altar with a strange device standing in the direct center.

The device was in the midst of swirling around, the core in the center shone bright with a mixture of elemental energies, including void magic. Several rings orbited the core, rotating in opposing directions like a gyro sphere of some sort.

"Oh, how I wonder what device is being fought over." Raoul thought sarcastically as he walked toward the device. Its design and arrangement gave little away as to what this device was supposed to do.

Whatever it was it seemed like it could generate considerable power given the levels Raoul could already sense from the device, and from what he could tell it was rising at a rapid rate. As the warrior neared the altar he hesitated as he sensed an incoming attack.

Raoul side flipped out of the way, twisting in the direction of the attack as he landed in a crouch. His a flick of his wrist he summoned his claymore, allowing one of its blade edges to rest on the ground.

The warrior's eyes narrowed in the direction of the enemy that had just entered the room.

An Abyss Principality.

"I should have expected one such as yourself would show their face," The Abyss Principality said as he hovered further into the room flanked by several abyss mages, and two abyss lectors. "But to have the Master Guardian himself join us is a surprise."

Raoul huffed a humorless laugh, pushing himself up to a standing position, "Where ever a threat to Teyvat might lurk I will not be far behind."

"Ever dedicated to your cause, Master Guardian," The Principality complimented, "A shame that dedication is not toward our cause." The abyss order members fanned out across the room, cordoning off one-third of the room that housed the device and what appeared to be a control console, of a sort.

Raoul prepared to strike, ignoring the Principality in favor of going for the device. It was far more important, and it wasn't like the Principality was a real threat to him. Raoul's true objective was to secure the device so that neither the Fatui nor the Abyss Order had it under their control.

Unfortunately, the real threats soon emerged.

An explosion rocked the room as one of the walls was blown open. The wall opposite both the abyss order and Raoul, off to the side of the device that had been empty.

At first a small horde of Fatui infantry entered, agents, cicin mages, and more, but once they'd moved into position, two others entered.

Technically three, but whatever.

Raoul's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Harbingers." He hissed under his breath.

One, of the all too familiar, Harbingers began clapping as they caught sight of Raoul and the Principality.

"Well, what do we have here?" Il Dottore said, his clapping coming to an end. "An Abyss Principality and the Master Guardian himself in one place?" Il Dottore hummed in humor, "The prize for this evening must be of some worth for such people to be involved."

"So it would seem," The second Harbinger, Sandrone, continued, sitting atop the hand of her automation. "It seems we arrived just in time for the festivities." The petite woman droned on, her tone giving off a bored kind of vibe to it.

Raoul's hand clenched onto the handle of his claymore. A Harbinger was bad enough but had been expected in this situation, but to have two show up? That wasn't good.

Especially give one of them in particular.

Raoul's eyes met the mask of his foe, "Dottore." He said evenly.

"Raoul." The Harbinger responded in kind, "I expected your order would be involved, and for it to specifically be you." The mad scientist laughed quietly to himself, "That's why I came all this way out here after all."

"I'm flattered," Raoul countered. His eyes tracked back to the device, which was spinning even faster than before. The power build-up was beginning to spike drastically, a wave of pressure began to descend upon the room, going unnoticed by the strongest and most oblivious among them.

Of course, the Harbingers noticed it as well as Sandrone had glanced in the direction of the device. The build-up was getting overwhelming to some, as some of the Fatui infantry wobbled a bit as they stood ready to fight.

"Caught between a rock and a hard place," Raoul's eyes tracked between the two opposing factions, with the device in between the both of them. "What could go wrong?"

As if to answer his rhetorical question, the universe responded.

A harsh crunch of metal echoed through the room, as one of the metal rings orbiting the core twisted, warped, and snapped.

"Ah, that could go wrong." Raoul muttered to himself as he sighed, "Should have seen that coming with my luck."

The core roared to life, its power spiked to such an extent that it fried all the other equipment in the room, including damaging the automation Sandrone was seated on. With one ring broken, and elemental energies going wild, the other rings soon followed.

Sparks of several kinds of elements flickered and crackled around the device. Electro, Pyro, and Anemo, just to name a few, fired off from the core around the room, striking walls at random. One unlucky Fatui solider took a direct electro bolt to the chest which sent him spasming across the room. The build-up of elemental energy was so severe that everyone present inside the room began to feel physical pain from the overwhelming pressure alone.

The pain was enough to subdue many of the Fatui and Abyss Order soldiers.

The core violently shook with enough force to cause the entire facility to rock back and forth, cracks appeared on the walls as the stone was shaken apart. The floor opened up below many of them, to switch some of the unlucky Fatui infantry and Abyss Mages to fall into the depths of the earth.

The facility, and the landscape it was housed in, was being torn asunder.

The ones remaining standing were limited to the Abyss Principality, the two Harbingers, and Raoul, if barely for all of them.

"I need to make a move now!" Raoul thought to himself. Which a burst of electro Raoul made for the device, but as the warrior closed in on the core in the center of the altar he sensed a surge of abyssal energy. He twisted out of the way in time to see an arrow of abyssal magic fly past him, halting his charge in the process but leaving him relatively close to his target.

Raoul's eyes tracked toward the Abyss Principality off to his side who had his hand outstretched, pulsing with abyssal magic, as if awaiting a second chance to fire on him.

"You will not disturb our work Guardian!" The Principality yelled, despite visibly writhing under the same strain Raoul and the others were feeling. The two Harbingers went to move, Il Dottore toward the device and Sandrone further away, as Raoul prepared to make a break for the device again.

Raoul was about to retort when the core of the device brightened to such an extent that the room, and his vision, went white.

In an instant, he lost consciousness.

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"Anemone, what is that?!" One android yelled, concern and worry taking full hold of her tone. Many of the other androids present were in the same state, all watching in both awe and horror.

Anemone included.

"I- I don't know," Anemone mumbled to herself, her eyes locked on the tear above that had suddenly opened up. All androids present were too shocked to respond in some way, the only thing they could do was look on in confusion and shock.

"None of this makes sense! This seemed illogical, impossible, nothing on this planet should have been able to tear a hole open across the sky! Machine or otherwise!" Anemone's mind yelled at her, his hands clutched at her rifle tight enough to dent it.

"Someone contact Commander Rose, now!"

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"Commander!" An operator called out in concern. "Anomalous energy readings detected on earth!"

Commander White turned to regard her for a moment, her brows furrowing, "Put it on screen!" She yelled, gesturing toward the larger monitor in the command center. The Operator did just that, allowing the readings and statistics to appear on the main screen to the side whilst a camera on the outside of the bunker locked onto the source of the reading.

To the surprise of everyone in the room, including the Commander despite her best efforts to remain composed, the operators in the rooms witnessed a massive tear appear in the sky above Earth.

Commander White's eyes narrowed in on the anomalous spatial tear that had opened up, the readings off to the sides of the screen indicated a spike of power far beyond what even YoRHa was capable of.

If YoRHa didn't do this, and she doubted the machines were capable of this, then that left only one option.

"Could it be…" The Commander whispered to herself.

Although she didn't want to consider the possibility, there was a chance this was caused by a long-since hidden enemy.

There is only one way to find out.

/_\

Raoul groaned as he slowly awakened, his body ached, soreness spread across his entire form. His eyes fluttered, it took a moment for him to adjust to the bright light of the sun. Raoul could feel the rays of sunlight on his skin, a gentle warmth enveloped his bare skin.

It took a moment to recover from his slight daze, shaking his head to try and rid the blurriness of his vision. Raoul pushed himself off the sandy ground, strands of sand falling from his clothes as he did.

"That…" Raoul muttered to himself, "...could have gone better." He grunted. Slipping into a sitting position Raoul glanced around him to find out exactly where he was.

To his complete surprise, he found himself surrounded by sand, but a glimmer in the sky caught his eye. Raoul looked to the sky to see a tear, he watched for a moment as the wound closed slowly before finally sealing itself and disappearing as if it was never there leaving on multiple trails across the sky from whatever had been thrown from it.

"Oh don't tell me…" Raoul grunted as he rose to his feet. "That better not have been what I think it was." He added with a sigh. If his hypothesis was correct then that was a portal he'd just been thrown through.

Now, if that was true, the next question to answer was where was he now?

Glancing further into the distance he saw large canyon walls in front of him similar to the ones he'd seen in Sumeru before, but directly behind him a great distance away was what looked like large building-like structures.

It was hard to distinguish exactly what they looked like with the distance, and heatwaves, distorting his view, but they were buildings for sure. Even if the shape alone wasn't something reminiscent of any structures he'd seen in Sumeru it was his best bet if he was to escape this sandy desert wasteland.

Raoul sighed, "This is not how I imagined my week would go." He thought before setting off toward the structures in the distance.

The rogue could only hope he was still in Teyvat in the first place.

But a sinking feeling in his gut told him otherwise.

Why was he always the one getting into situations like this?

C1: End.

lol

Another one.

A double whammy, Genshin X Nier. Let's see where this one goes. Does anyone want to take a guess as to "when" this story is taking place in the Nier universe? :D

As always my update schedule is fucked, it could be two weeks or eight months between updates so I apologize in advance for that. Hell, it could end with this single chapter if it turns out the idea goes nowhere fast. I just need to get ideas out of my head so I can focus on things better and currently ongoing stories, you know?

And the Teyvat Raoul comes from is an AU, so there will be differences from the game story just so y'all are aware. It'll be explained later on, just bare with it.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter regardless.

Till the next one!

AlcatrazDGold - Good luck!