Crash Course Summary

Necessary Background Context

In a world parallel to Earth, (This world is referred to as “Farther Earth” at the moment. It is basically medieval times sort of thing, with magic. There is a “Closer Earth” as well, we will get to that later,) humans, nymphs, and sylphs coexist and live simple lives in scattered villages and towns. An organization, referred to as the Black Crusaders, stirs chaos in this world globally, while simultaneously pretending to cure said chaos to keep a status quo (And funding.) Therefore, many cities, towns, and villages remain very isolated because the valleys, forests, and mountains between them are conquered by “bandits and thieves,” but luckily, the crusaders “protect their cities” from them.

Part I - Experience

Carter Smith, his brother Felix Smith, (Felix Smith has narcolepsy, meaning he sleeps in excess,) and their best friend Leonidas Dimitris are kidnapped, (Leonidas walked into his friends’ parents’ house at a bad time. Carter had just watched his parents murder, while Felix was asleep in another room. They didn’t fight back after that,) by a deceptive organization for use in their less than ethical experiments in pursuit of answers to their world’s mystical abilities, (These experiments involved turning humans into nymphs, because it wasn’t currently understood at the time how their races were connected. There were certain types of magic that nymphs were significantly more proficient with, and if they could give these abilities to humans, it might’ve illuminated the relationship between their races. This wouldn’t really help the Crusaders learn this though, however, it became a quite persuasive tool for obedience, ie, “we can give you powers if you do what we say.”) These experiments have silently killed countless “missing” people, but they happen to become the very first successful iterations of these trials. They become weapons for the organization, used to continue deceiving the world of their true intents, or collecting more people to use for their gluttonous pursuit for power. They are kept prisoner by the health problems, mental and physical, caused by the crusader’s experiments, and threats to the safety of the ones they love. They find a window for escape during an abrupt Coup de Tat, in which the current leader, Marx Ivanov, is killed by his brother, Natz Ivanov, who takes power immediately after. In the chaos of it all, Leo is accidentally left behind. (Leo was manipulated by many people and used as a tool before and during the coup. He was made to start it by killing the leader’s daughter, and all of the blame for everything bad that happened that day was put on him. He was promptly captured and imprisoned, which is why Connor and Rei had to leave him behind; they had to assume he was killed.)

Part II - Sanctuary

About seven to ten years (The amount of time that passes during and between parts is still contested. Like I said earlier, this is very far from being done, and certain details tend to change as the story grows more complex.) have passed since Connor (Connor is Carter Smith’s new name. He feigned amnesia and slurred his own name in Part I and Connor stuck.) and Rei (Rei was introduced in Part I. She became Connor’s best friend, and eventually his partner. She feels at fault for leaving Leo behind.) have escaped. Pherenix (Pherenix (“Fair-en-icks”) is Felix and Pheren’s name combined, as they inhabit one body. The experiment that the crusaders did on Felix resulted in a conscious, second identity residing within Felix’s mind in the form of a spider that appeared in his dreams and as another internal monologue, and they had to learn how to coexist to survive. This was a very rough process, because Pheren was initially very vindictive and self destructive.) had escaped on his own, some time after Connor and Rei, and they had become estranged. The story kicks off shortly after the last leader is killed by his wife for adultery, who then kills herself and the woman he cheated on her with. Lee, (Leonidas is nicknamed “Lee” by his lover, as she loves to give everyone nicknames, and Leo is not a nickname that she created, so she despised it.) manipulated by a new lover, (Victoria “Vi” Ainsworth.) pretends to be a clone, (Clones were the organization's next new ambition. There would only ever be one successful clone, who would be born during Part II, and it is a clone of Connor. Nevertheless, Leo, with a change of appearance and behavior, makes a convincing clone of Natz,) of the fallen leader to take his place. Lee and Victoria become heavily dependent on drug use, and their reign is very messy to say the least. They have a dragon hunting campaign, based mainly on the fact that Lee’s first child, (Brook has three genetic parents. A captured dragon, Creek Madigan (a side character from Part I), and Leonidas (through a primitive form of IVF, using material that Leo never knew was collected.) Leo only found out about Brook after she was born, and after Creek died during birth. She is very mutated as a result of the experiment, and is the closest the Crusaders would ever come to synthesizing a sylph. Dragons are a type of wild sylph. They are the size of dogs, (as in as small or as big as dogs can get,) and they behave like various lizard types. They are not mystical treasure hoarders, they are more often viewed as just any other animal.) who, through experimentation and such, is part dragon, has been released into the wild by previous leadership. Vi wants this child to be killed, as she and Lee have a child of their own, however, as time goes on, Lee becomes attached to Brook and hides her from Vi, eventually releasing her back to the wild. Meanwhile, Connor and Rei are raising a child on their own, and Brook, who wanders to their house. They believed Leo was dead, until Lee and Vi showed up on their doorstep as their enemies, trying to kill Brook. When Vi almost shoots Lucielle, Lee takes the shot for her, and Vi loses her mind with grief, (She was also under the influence,) and kills herself. (This part is quite messy because it is literally not written yet, at all. It is only outlined through characters and things that happen to them. It is basically a combination epilogue to part I and prologue to part III. Also continue to keep in mind that this entire project is still in rough drafts.)

Part III - Project Hope Effect

This part begins in Closer Earth, completely separate from the previous two parts. (..as far as you know.) Aiko is a high schooler who struggles socially and academically. (She is also an individual with autism. Her struggles with it are discussed in far more detail in the text, as with most everything else in the narrative, to be frank.) Her friends are gathered by Chrys, (Chrys is a deserting Crusader who was about to be executed for murdering a superior officer.) who came from Farther Earth from a machine. (This machine was originally a time machine built by Connor, but it was altered and became a dimensional portal.) Her friends are given magical abilities to fight the now invading crusaders. (Magic originates from Farther Earth, and does not exist in Closer Earth until the two are connected by the portal. Magic is “given” to Closer Earth humans through contact with a Far Earthling.) They are trying to protect their city from the sudden new threats brought by the portal’s opening, as crusaders begin infiltrating and wreaking havoc. One in particular, Loki, becomes a friend to Aiko, (They may or may not eventually get together. In the narrative, it is hinted at for a very long time.) despite Loki’s destructive and reckless activities. (Loki is an arsonist. A goofy one, if you will.) Loki eventually completely switches to the hero’s side, tired of the abuses from the crusaders, and her adoptive mother, Antoinette. (Madame Antoinette is the current leader of the crusaders, and is also Natz’s oldest child. She was too young to be leader at the time Lee took over.) There are plenty of hijinks and lighthearted shenanigans, but the tone becomes very serious when one of Aiko’s friend’s younger sister, Hina, is murdered by the crusaders. They realize that these people are no joke, and must be taken as a serious threat. They travel to Farther Earth to put a stop to them, and Loki runs into an old friend, Persephone. The team is skeptical of her, just as they were to Loki, but Persephone helps. Regardless, most of the team shun her and believe her to be an informant, (She was not the informant.) because the crusaders seem to know a lot about their plans, and cast her out. Persephone is then captured by the crusaders, and coerced (Antoinette has a grudge against Persephone, because she affirmed Loki’s identity as a transgender woman. Antoinette abuses Persephone using the same drugs that killed Lee, and Perse becomes dependent on the drugs and the organization administering them.) into working for them. (While working for them, she disguises herself and takes up the codename Kore. (pronounced “COR-ay”)) However, on her first mission fighting the team, Loki sees through her disguise and rallies the team to save her. Perse suffers withdrawals, but perseveres. They then decide to make the final push and kill Antoinette, but Loki is approached and threatened by a crusader general to abandon her friends and return to the crusaders. She pretends to agree before attacking them with bombs, and the team sees this from a distance, and quickly plans an infiltration on the crusader base. Loki and Aiko reunite at the base of Antoinette’s tower and scale it together. Loki struggles to fight Antoinette, but Aiko manages to land a hit on Antoinette and beheads her, but the force of her attack shatters the balcony. Loki sprouts wings and saves herself and Aiko, revealing that she is a half sylph, and the remaining crusaders retreat.

Part IV - Truth

(Part IV shifts in time quite often because we often realize more and more things have to happen between III and IV for things to click together. There is currently not a set in stone time gap length.)

A lot has happened since Antoinette was slain. Loki has moved to Closer Earth with Aiko, but they became distant over time due to financial struggles, and Loki moved out. Persephone, now going by Percy, (A name that isn’t as strange as Persephone to the residents of Closer Earth.) is working as a private investigator, (She has been hired by a very prominent pop culture figure to find her runaway child. There is a huge scandal surrounding this situation that I do not think I should get into in this summary for length’s sake.) and is making a lot of dough, on the other hand. Aiko and Loki haven’t broken up per se, but they have only really made contact through texts, calls. and writing for a while, and it is soon discovered that someone with shape-shifting abilities (The shapeshifter really only uses his ability to replicate Aiko’s voice on the phone, as well as biometric login to her phone.) has been pretending to be her for an unknown amount of time, and the team reunites (They never really disbanded, they just became busy in their own lives due to jobs and college.) to search for her. Their search takes them around the city a bit, where they find an abandoned child, who the group reluctantly lets follow them while they search. They eventually end up back in Farther Earth, where they would eventually group up with an old friend of Chrys’s, (Chrys and Connor are drinking buddies.) but their weeks of constant travelling and searching show no progress in finding her. They take a rest stop at a bar that Chrys and Connor frequent, only to discover that Aiko has had a memory altering event and has been living in Farther Earth under a new name, Jaylo, as a barkeep. Chaos ensues, obviously. (Loki tries to bring Aiko back by jogging Jaylo’s memories, but that isn’t how amnesia works; Some side characters get into relationship troubles because of trust issues; Aiko not being recoverable makes things harder on everyone, but especially Loki.) They eventually realize that Jaylo was kidnapped and abused by the crusaders because her status as a closer earthling with magic abilities piqued their interest, and they decide to, once again, put an end to them, and for good. They also learn that the boy that has joined them on their search for Aiko was actually a crusader spy, and not only that, he is the standing monarch of the crusaders. He feigned childish behavior, though he is only 11, to gain their trust, and his presence there created a huge divide in the group because some of the group wanted to continue to welcome him. He had begun to show that he was learning empathy and that he wanted to make things right; he had only known what he was taught and he was very good at destruction, but others began to see he could rebuild. Of course, most of the team remained skeptical of him, so he led them to their base to prove his apols. This is where Percy discovers her younger brother, who she thought was lost or passed on, had become a crusader, and a vicious one at that. (Percy's brother, Damian, was led away from their famimly a long time ago by worldly forces.) They have to fight what little remains of the crusaders’ ranks, including Percy’s brother, before they flee, leaving behind their bunker and the portal. This is also when Loki is forced to accept that Aiko is now Jaylo. The ending of this part is intentionally left confusing and unfulfilling, as it leads into V.

Part V - Balance

There is not much of a time gap between IV and V, as Percy’s discovery of her brother’s involvement with the crusaders launches the team headfirst into conflict. Damian, who had become the adjunct leader after Ki’s disappearance, is searching for something across both worlds, and is seen as a lunatic by the remaining crusaders because of his impulsive tendencies and ramblings. It turns out, that he has been possessed by a worldly being named Mephistopheles (The aspect of chaos in creation, Mephisto, wants both worlds to become him, chaos. This would cause everything to lose sentience, as he would become them. This scenario is seen as an apocalypse for closer and farther earth.) for a very long time, and that being has used Damian as a conduit for his whims. In order for Mephisto to interact with the world, he must have a body belonging to a world, (He has been using Damian as a puppet for a long time, but never fully possessing him, because he was unable to. He could only continuously speak to Damian telepathically to influence him to his whims.) and in order to control the worlds, he needs possession of a tool that connects the worlds together. (This “tool” is somewhat of a mystical item referred to as the “Singularity,” which is of unknown material or exigence. It could be literally anything, from a tree, to a breadcrumb, but the only way to discover it, or one of it, is to find something that is not mirrored to the other universe, as it is an item that exists between them; you could say that the singularity is the mirror.) Damian is eventually all on his own, on a wild goose chase for something that may or may not even exist, and the team repeatedly tries to pull him from the brink of his madness, but this ends in an altercation and fight every time. The team consoles Percy that there really isn’t anything they can do for Damian, but she refuses to give in, and agrees to one more attempt before she would “give up,” but she is confident she will not lose. Percy approaches Damian, and they once again get into an argument, and in a blind rage, Damian kidnaps Percy and their father and vanishes. The team frantically searches for them. Meanwhile, Damian had taken them to the portal in the base, and is yelling his grievances at his family, when he realizes that Percy herself does not have a mirrored self in closer earth, and therefore is a singularity. He turns on the portal, to take them to closer earth, but is stopped by the team. (They were able to find Percy and Damian only because the portal was activated; it emits anomalous energies. As portals do.) There isn’t time for Percy to explain that Damian may make attempts on her life at this point because she is this thing that Damian has been madly searching for, and a very frenzied Damian attacks them all. Percy, reluctant to attack her brother, is soon killed by Damian, and he uses her soul to bring Mephistopheles to the physical world. The team is grief-struck and unable to keep themselves together, while Damian loses his body to Mephisto. After a moment, the aspect of balance, Abaddon, makes an appearance using the singularity’s presence to revive Percy, and vanishes, using his power only to restore balance. The team remains shocked, and Mephisto is very pissed that his opposite had foiled his plans, and Damian’s body continues to suffer. Percy regrettably puts him out of his misery, and the entire conflict ends.