Prolog
"Peace is not the absence of War, but the presence of Justice." — Unknown.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to travel faster than light between planets, much more to travel between stars… and a genuinely unfathomable amount to travel between galaxies. — Yet that was what was involved here, unimaginable power that reached from the Project and washed back towards the Milky Way, attracted to the Citadel like a lightning bolt to a rod.
The technology that had been taken to Andromeda to establish a Mass Relay there worked, but the excess energies were far beyond the scope of the Mass Relay's ability to handle, instead shunting the energies back into the network to dissipate — a prudent move, scattering that energy across thousands of relays… except that the power, even so divided, was such that even then the devices were overloaded.
Emergency protocols fired, redirecting the energies into the primary and secondary coils, overcharging the mass relays, and finally discharging, enveloping everything within a 0.31 light second radius in a mass effect field and disappearing from the universe as it rent the very fabric of space and time.
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Pain is your existence — it has been for what feels like eternity — and darkness… you wait for your friend, The Hero, to help you. But, no, he's dead… you think. The pain makes it hard to think, your body would be writhing if it still had the muscle tone and strength… once you were strong, now you cannot even breathe on your own.
Time passes, as it always does, in pain. You struggle and fight against the tides of darkness, but always wreathed in fatigue and agony that never subsides — you feel your people, living, dying, some being corrupted, some acting in ways that would bring tears of pride to your eyes if you could still cry — an endless wash that blends into your torment giving it any measure of meaning.
You feel the vast hoards of psykers pouring out their life energies into your old focus, aligning themselves to your own psychic power and augmenting what power you send to the Astronomicon… but you are unable to tap any of that power, it is too far 'downstream' and it pulls away what excess psychic energy you generate before you can direct the power to heal your own body, if you even could. — The pain of the psykers floods over you and mingles with your own, you wish that you could free them, you wish you could free yourself.
You are powerless — where you had once been such a great power that the galaxy shook when you decided to move, now you are a shadow of your former self, frozen in time, frozen in agony: all being and no acting.
Chaos still moves, but you can do nothing. Corruption plagues your imperium, but you cannot deal justice. Your sons, dead, lost, betrayed, or perverted — everything you valued has been stripped of you — even your own body and mind.
Despite your physical might, despite your prowess, despite your psychic gifts you have been brought to nothing — you once thought men foolish for believing religion, now you wish there was a true God to appeal to. — 'Save me!' you cast into the void… and time passes.
Then a small hole appears in reality, edges burning away like the cherry of a cigar, highly unstable — inside, small souls, flickering in the immaterium as the reality on the other side of the breach is flooded by the un-reality that is the Warp… and you pull them towards you — your concentration wavers as energy pours over them, not the chaos of the warp, nor the ruinous powers, but something else… you almost lose your grip on them, but recover, pulling harder even as your psychic energy drains away, bleeding into the immaterium where the deamons wait.
And one of the small souls latches onto you, like a hand grasping another, and you pull toward each other — in that instant the ruinous powers, the gods of chaos, notice — they send a wave of chaotic energy in their spite, ripping at the souls in your grasp — and the hole rips open, fracturing and fraying the edges, but the small souls fly to you, and you guide them to your physical body…
Just as a great wave of psychic energy from the chaos gods collide in the hole in reality the small souls just were, further fraying and damaging the wall between worlds — but the wound flares and seals shut, leaving shards of reality, time, souls, and more littering the non-landscape of the immaterium and among this detritus you see several spirits, obviously torn from their bodies in the torrents of power, just unleashed.
You snatch them before the Ruinous Powers can get them, it was close but you did it. — Shoving the spirits into the bodies laying prone in your throne room before their life-forces can truly fade — you feel your psychic energy lessening as fatigue threatens to overcome you.
But you did it, you saved them.
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Death was, you were quickly finding out, rather bothersome — well maybe it was more the fault of the self-proclaimed goddess, Aqua, sitting in front of you, insulting you to your face, taunting you… really the most grating and ungracious sort of person. — Sure, you had died because of the terror of being run over by a truck… apparently wetting yourself and having a heart-attack. It really wasn't all that funny.
You waited for the blue-haired goddess to recover from her latest bout of giggles and resume her speech — she was offering to let you go to a world that "desperately needed a hero to save if from the forces of Chaos" and all that spiel that you're familiar with from your time playing games.
You'd gotten pretty good at such games, so it didn't take much prodding from her to make you see the appeal of going to such a world with your knowledge intact… she was even trying to sweeten the deal by saying that you could take any one thing you wished, laying out a mess of papers that described everything from superpowers to legendary items to amazing skills.
"So, hurry up and pick one!" The goddess nagged, not even giving you time to read more than two or three of the papers describing their proffered boon. "Come-on! I haven't got all day!"
She was really starting to annoy you with her loud mouth and haughty attitude — it would be satisfying to be able to say something that would shut her up.
"Hurry up, you can have any one thing." Aqua prodded again.
Yeah, something that would shut her big mouth would be good, you don't think there'll be anything, but you raise your hand and point at the goddess — "Then the 'thing' I want to take is you!"
"That's not funny." Aqua said, suddenly dry and much more reserved.
You grin, happy with yourself, "Alright, fine then…" — You think about the most overpowered thing in recent pop-culture history, and the Sharingan from Naruto pops instantly into your mind, with it's predictive properties, the copying, and all the super-jitsu — but that would make your eyes very valuable, as in "steal me!" valuable.
Wait a second… "Will I be able to speak their language?"
"Oh, that won't be a problem; with the kind support of us gods, we'll overload your brain so you'll learn it instantly! See?" Aqua said, pulling a book from a stand and flipping it open.
The book, titled 'Reincarnation: Rules, Regulations, and Restrictions, sixth edition. (Matt Ward)' was shoved into your hands and fell open to a section on languages reading exposing a warning:
Insertion of extra-dimensional language in lateral-reincarnation requires instantaneous and simultaneous overloading of the cerebral cortex and hippocampus — in rare cases this may cause the loss of faculties and/or cranial-explosion; such situations are not covered by sections 8.3.4 and 12.4.6 (g) and the Reincarnating Authority shall not be held liable.
Wait a second, this could make your brain explode? — That didn't sound too good…
"Wait, what's that about exploding?" you ask.
"Hm, what? Nothing." Aqua says quickly shutting the book with an awkward laugh, "Um, the legal department had to put that there… you know, for insurance purposes."
You nod, that made sen… no! That doesn't make sense!
"Why would Heaven need insurance?" you ask, utterly puzzled by the explanation… and becoming less and less reassured.
"Because insurance companies don't cover Acts of God." Aqua explained plainly.
'That makes even less sense!' you think to yourself, becoming slightly distracted by the absurdity of everything here.
"Erm, well, I want the ability to copy skills I se–" You stop yourself, there's a better way to phrase this that won't limit you to just sight, "–witness. Skills I witness."
"Very well," Aqua said, snatching up a paper and offering it to you.
"Wait!" You say, reading the paper, "I said skills I witness, not just ones I see."
"Oh, fine!" Aqua said, pulling out a brush, ink jar, and paper.
Three tries later, and a bit of needling on your part, and Aqua was ready to give you the most broad copying ability you wanted just to shut you up and get you out of her hair.
You, Satou Kazuma, are ready to begin your adventure!
