Site Back-Story & Reset

[Son Gohan]

Site Back-Story & Reset

The site back-story will explain a great deal of things and be the generalised opener that all members will be expected to take into account, IC, when they start posting on the main forum! It is directly linked to the pre-opening saga, the Tournament (found here) and will be linked to a great many things in the future, so I suggest you read it thoroughly. Rules linked to this reset can be found in the Rules & Guideline section (here) and are very important, so can all members please make sure they also read these in great detail too.

A copy of the back-story can be found below.


The Beginning of the End,
The End of the Beginning

Space
The Final Frontier

The dark and emptiness of space is a foreboding sight, one that invokes many of life’s greatest and most mystifying questions; how far does space stretch on for? Does it ever end? Are we alone in the universe? The latter of which, we now know the answer to; we are not. However, many are ignorant to such facts, content to busy themselves with their day-to-day lives, and while many watched the happenings of the World Martial Arts Tournament on Earth, something monumental was happening elsewhere.

Across known universe, in the far reaches of the galaxy, resides a star system that was incredibly close to the galaxy’s centre point. Within this star system exists a planet, specifically the second closest planet to the first sun of the system, the only planet that sustained life; the only planet within the solar system to do so. The planet is mostly populated by a race known as the Dragonians, a race that are distant cousins to the Saiyans, albeit far more peaceful in nature. That planet is called Dragonia, and the fate of the universe is being decided on its surface…

Dragonia
The Great Continent
Grasslands of Western Parmecia

The velvet night’s sky had slowly consumed the land leaving the appearance that everything had slipped into another world, a world of complete opposites. A wind like no other plagues the land on this night, as it did to the majority of the planet, rippling through the grass like a stone penetrating the surface of water. The moon, seemingly larger than it had ever been, reflected its silver glow down upon the ancient ruins of times of past, memories that stood battered, eroded and destroyed atop one of the many rolling hills of grass within the Grasslands of Western Parmecia.

Two figures stood in the centre of a large part of the main ruins, somewhat raised and overlooking the land below the hill. It was a large circular area with statues, or at least what was left of them, completely surrounding its furthest most edge. The silhouettes of both figures seemed to be emphasised by the sheer light that the moon had to offer them. With nothing but the moonlight to light up the area everything had taken a partial silver hue, causing it to look like a very beautiful scene, but this was not the case; as far from the truth as it could possibly be.

Both figures were male, and while they looked starkly difference…they also appeared to have far too many similarities. One was somewhat more slender than the other, though it was hard to notice this through his royal blue clothing and cloak, which flapped about his body wildly in the wind. His azure blue eyes, so intense they almost appeared to pulsate, were all that were visible above the tip of his cloak thanks to the darkness of the night and the fringe of his flowing, jet-black hair, which partially fell over his eyes and down past his neck. However, the beginnings of old scars marked the top of his cheeks, notably lining down his face and across his forehead. His left arm was strapped up underneath his cloak, while his right held one of two samurai blades, the other sheathed at his waist.

The other, in contrast, was far more on display. His incredibly long, silver hair flowed down towards his knees, but was flapping about just as violently as the other mans cloak. This man wore black leather. His boots were made of it, as were his trousers and the full-body length coat that he wore, giving him the appearance of a biker. He wore nothing on the top half of his body, underneath the coat, leaving his somewhat muscular and pale body on display for all to see. This man had scars or blemishes on his face, but a sizable ‘X’ shape scar across the centre of his chest, and his eyes were entire crimson, besides the black of his pupils. Unlike the other man, this one held a rather large bastard sword in his left hand, its tip angled down but held just above the ground.

The two stood in complete silence, neither blinking nor saying a word. However, after a few moments there was a flash of lightning in the distance, and in that split moment the both of them exploded forward towards each other. As the light settled the two had already collided, the clang of metal against metal ringing through the air like a chime before finally being drowned out by the follow-up clash of thunder. Sparks grinded into existence as the two blades were forced against each other, the blades rubbing against each other under great force. Before long the point of impact on both swords grew glowing red with heat.

“Do not be a fool Loki!” the gruff voice of the blue cloaked figure bellowed over the howling wind. It was a voice filled with age and wisdom, but otherwise emotionless, struggling in the battle of strength he was having with his opponent. “Stop this madness, this pointless fighting!”

The one known as Loki, dressed in the black leather, merely laughed through his clear struggling. “A fool!?” he spat back. “You couldn’t be further from the truth, brother!” Loki grunted as his arms tensed, the blades jolting his bones. “Why should I stop!?”

“Because,” Ryan paused as his expression, the first major sign of emotion thus far, twisted in exertion. “the end is neigh! Time is running out, and-” There was another pause, but this time it was because Ryan did not believe the words he was about to speak. “-I cannot do this without your help.” those last few words wounded him more than any blade could ever have.

Those words surprised Loki beyond anything else he could have heard, enough for his muscles to falter, giving Ryan the advantage. With one final push and a shout, Ryan stepped forward and toppled Loki, knocking Bane, his sword, clean out of his hand and him to the floor. The Lord of Hell crashed into the ground on his back, cursing his idiocy at allowing his guard down. As his sword dug into the ground a few feet away from his position, Loki moved to make a dart towards it, but the glistening of light reflecting off of the blade aimed down at his throat stopped him; Ryan had bested him.

“End it.” Loki snarled, knowing full well he would simply transgress back down into his level of Hell, his domain, where he would be able to rise from again. “End it!” the venom in his voice was apparent.

Ryan simply looked down the blade of his sword, one half of his Twin Reavers, at his brother . Finally he spoke. “No.” though it was a singular word, it was spoken with an unquestionable certainty. Slowly he moved his sword away from Loki, taking a few steps back, allowing Loki the room to stand and retrieve his own sword, while he sheathed his own, next to its twin. “This fighting must stop. The fate of all existence rests on our shoulders.”

Loki watched with caution and mistrust as Ryan moved away, sheathing his sword. Wasting no time he jumped to his feet, rushing over to Bane and yanked it free of the concrete, spinning round to face his opponent. However, Ryan made no move for his swords; he made no move at all. Surprised again, Loki lowered his blade to the floor and considered his brothers words.

“What makes you think I can help you?” he asked, caution clear within his sly, hiss of a voice.

“Greed, Pride, Sloth, Lust, Envy, Gluttony and Wrath; the seven Crystals of Iniquity.” The short sentence carried a great weight, a weight that even Loki could feel.

“…what of them?”

“I know you have three of them. I have the remaining four. We can wish for this Great Catastrophe to be averted.”

Loki laughed sharply. “Brother, you know better than that. The Crystals only work when the wish comes from one of the seven deadly sins; each crystal representing a different one. Such noble wishes will never be granted.”

“Wrong, brother.” Ryan’s voice had remained emotionless this entire time, and that didn’t change now. “We have enough sin between us both to wish for anything; your pride will not allow you to die and my greed will not see the universe suffer extinction.” the aging samurai paused at this point, albeit only briefly. “Not forgetting your potential Wrath for the fallen angel, the love you do not wish to see wilt into nothingness.”

Loki seemed to ponder this for a few moments before reaching within his coat with his free hand, behind his body. When it returned out into the open he held three, thin but reasonably large, pulsating crystals - purple, orange and blue - all within his palm. Likewise Ryan reached within his cloak with his only good hand, retrieving four identical crystals, all pulsating in the same manner, only these were green, yellow, pink and red in colour; between them both the made the complete set.

Ryan glanced up at the sky as the wind picked up once again. The night was ending and on the horizon the larger sun was already moving into the sky, only it was different…the main source of all their troubles. The sun was expanding at an extremely rapid pace, and had been for quite some time. In less than a matter of minutes it would grow beyond its limitations, exploding and going supernova as a result. Normally this would not have been an issue that concerned anything more than their singular star system, however nothing in this situation was normal. The sun was bursting with a unnatural energy that could not be explained, and when it finally exploded it would no doubt have built up enough energy to wipe out all existence. Stopping it was beyond normal skill, but too much was at stake to fail.

As the sun finally peaked on the edge of the horizon it seemed to stop pulsating light, instead dulling to a point that it was almost possible to see directly through it. For the briefest of moments, at its darkest, it almost appeared as if something, or someone, resided within its centre, but in the blink of an eye the light came back stronger than ever, its energy ripping through its boundaries and exploding outward. The event that had been spoken of as the Great Catastrophe by the Dragonian people had finally began.

“Time has all but run out.” Ryan muttered, his voice full of sadness; his emotions betraying him for the second time. “We were too late.” he sighed and closed his eyes as the light consumed the entire planet. However, at that moment, as it was all about to end, he was positive he heard a distant but deafening scream of rage and pain, echoing outward across space. It sounded ancient, as if it was travelling from somewhere extremely far away, though from where and who he could not tell. For the briefest of moments the possibility that it was the Elder Gods of his people, screaming in protest of what was happening, crossed his mind, but that theory was quickly pushed aside; he would know, or not, soon enough.

This was the beginning of the end.

Earth
Papaya Islands
World Martial Arts Tournament

The people of Earth, generally living in ignorant bliss to the troubles of not only their own planet, but more specifically anything outside of the planets atmosphere, were blissfully moving through yet another ordinary day on their planet. It was an exciting time for many of the Earthlings as the famed World Martial Arts Tournament was taking place, having already reached the winners bout with the previous champion, no less. However, little did anyone know that the universe around them was slowly blinking out of existence and into nothingness.

The final battle of the tournament was taking place, the audience excited and entirely engrossed in the electric of events transpiring before their eyes. Nevertheless, slowly but surely the sky high above them was turning from a pale blue to that of a light yellow. The bright yellow, almost white, explosion of the sun had ripped through the universe planet-by-planet, leaving nothing, not even the darkness of space, in its wake. The mystical planet of Yardrat; the peaceful world of Namek; the barren planet Cold; the battle hardened Saiyan home ward of Vegeta; all had now been wiped from existence, destroyed by the blast. Earth was next.

As each second passed the sky grew brighter and brighter still. In no time at all it had become so bright that it consumed the entire sky, catching the attention of everyone on the planet. Some people simply looked up at the pulsating sky in awe and confusion, while others took part in mass hysteria and panic. Despite the varying reactions from the many people across the planet, there was one resounding thought that everyone shared, if even as a subconscious thought; this was the end of the world.

In the last few moments of life the entire planet was thrown into complete and utter chaos. Sea level rose and engulfed entire cities, the ground shook and crumbled underneath their very feet, and the volcanoes spilled their unquestionably hot magma onto the planets belly. With merciless speed the unbelievable energy of the explosion enveloped the entire planet…and as the light consumed everything to blinding point, all that remained was the ever distant, mysterious, echoing scream that seemed to glide on the back of extinction.

Dragonia
The Great Continent
Grasslands of Western Parmecia
The Eye of the Storm

Ryan opened his eyes somewhat gingerly, the creases of the scars of his face wrinkling as he squinted to help adjust his eyes to the light. Was he dead? It wouldn’t be the first time, though due to the severity of this incident he knew that there was no coming back this time, not for anyone. If truth were told he felt…content knowing that had been his fate. He had lived a fruitful life with many good things, though it had been a long and tiresome life with great sadness, devoted to others and the righting of his own sins. Not that it mattered anymore. No one in existence was going to cheat death on this day, not even his other half, Loki, and with him Ryan’s quest, no his redemption, was finally complete; he could finally, truly, rest.

However, soon enough the blurs of light in front of his eyes faded and then passed, though once they had he could not believe what his eyes were seeing. He was…exactly where he had been moments ago, in the ruins of the Western Parmecian Grasslands. “How is this even…possible?” he muttered, glancing all around him.

“It shouldn’t be.” was the sly, hiss of a response. A voice Ryan knew all too well. Glancing around Ryan looked directly in the path of his other half, Loki standing exactly where he had been before; it was as if nothing had changed, but everything had. “We’re in the core.”

Loki was glancing about, almost paying no attention to Ryan other than speaking to him. Following suit, the cloaked samurai began to assess his surroundings once more. Everything was so bright, so intense. He couldn’t feel anything, not even Loki, but the masses of energy that was closing in on them, even at that precise moment, and it was closing in fast; half of the Grassland was now obscure because of the light, which was now a large circle all around them. A circle that was closing in on them, and fast.

“The eye of the storm.” Ryan muttered gruffly. If he was correct then because the explosion had been from their sun and they had been so close to the explosion, they would be the last to be effected by it as it closed back in on itself; they were the last two left in all of existence. This caused Ryan to glance down at his own hand, opening his palms to reveal the four Crystals of Iniquity. There was still time to change everything, to prevent it from ever happening. There was still hope!

In a rare moment of collective clarity, where Ryan and Loki quite literally shared a brief instant of thought and emotion, the two halves of a whole looked directly at each other. No words needed speaking, no gestures signalling. In the blink of an eye the two rushed towards each other, but instead of continuing their earlier battle they instead both dropped to their knees and piled the seven crystals together on the floor. As before, when held together, they pulsated even brighter once all together, each pulsation speeding up until their all held a continuous glow of their respective colour. It was time, though time was almost up; once and for all.

As the glow of the crystals reached their brightest, showering both warriors in a rainbow of illumination, it signalled that they were finally ready for use. Ryan allowed a moment of expression to cross his face, one of joy and hope, but it quickly faded as the samurai focused on the monumental task at hand.

“What is your one wish?” the voice echoed within Ryan’s mind, and by the sudden surprise of Loki it seemed as if he had heard it too.

Ryan remembered that these worked on the basis of sins, so his wording would be vital. “In Greed and Wrath I demand that you undo the damage done by the sun, bringing everything back-” but before he could finish, his other half interrupted.

“-and reset events to a time before all of this for me!”

Ryan looked towards his other half with utter shock and disbelief. “…what have you done…”

Loki merely looked at him with a self satisfied smirk. “Just rewriting history, brother.”

And with that the light consumed them all, blinding everything until there was nothing but white in all directions. That maddening scream suddenly filled Ryan’s ears until it seemed to consume his very soul, his essence. It was haunting. When he finally felt that it was going to drive him totally insane, when all hope had faded from his mind and he was sure that this was the end for him, something unexpected pulled him back from the very brink.

“So be it.”

The Universe Reset
The Great Catastrophe

And in the blink of an eye the energy that had consumed the universe vanished and the black of space returned in an instant, the ominous screaming immediately ceasing and leaving all in a silence and peaceful state. Despite the close call and the attempt from Loki to bend the wish to his own, twisted needs, Ryan of Dragonia had succeeded in saving the universe from the brink of extinction, returning everything back to normal; though not was as it had previously been.

Only one sun resided within the solar system of Dragonia, the smaller and stable one. As Ryan had wished for, the sun that had caused all the destruction was no longer in existence, so the threat it held would be forever removed. However, as both Ryan and Loki had known prior to the use of the Crystals of Iniquity, a wish from the crystals are never as straight forward as it originally seemed; the crystals were sly and devious, and this use of them had been no different.

Somehow, most likely thanks to Loki’s interference, time had…mutated, in an unpredictable and unexpected fashion. However, the wish had not worked as Loki had planned it to. Instead of physically being sent backwards through time, his mind and memory was instead erased back to that point. The wish had not only effected Loki, as he had obviously intended, but rather people across the entire galaxy, many of whom had been thrown slightly back into the past, to a point in time prior to the suns explosion. They still coexisted in this physical realm, sharing it with those who had not been affected, but held no memory, experience or understanding of anything past the point where their mind had been sent back to - a somewhat different point, depending on the individual.

And people were not only effected in this manner. It seemed as if power had been sapped from everyone in the universe, rendering each individual as no more powerful than the average person - despite how strong and skilled they had been prior to the event; this had seemingly effected every person in existence. On top of this fragments from the past, people and events long since happened and departed, were returning to repeat themselves, almost as if time had partially lost cohesion. It wasn’t just people who had been effected, entire planets had been too.

Life and existence had been saved, but at what cost? The true extent was still not known, and to many would never be known. To those who remembered what happened, down to the last seconds of existence, a mystery would be dangled in front of them that most would not be able to ignore. However, despite their personal states, one thing was true for every person in the entire universe. Nothing was ever going to be the same again…