Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem Awakening.

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"This is it! Our final battle! #####, Reflet, you're both one of us, no 'destiny' can change that!" The blue-haired man says, looking between me and the girl standing by my side. "Now, let's kill this dastard and be done with it!"

I feel myself nodding, despite having little idea what's going on. My body moves on its own to pull out a powerful tome: Thoron. The girl next to me, who I instinctively know is my sister Reflet (despite us looking nothing alike), takes a large silver axe off her back and nods as well.

"Ha ha ha! Why do you resist?" A tall, grey-skinned man cackles. Purple magic swirls around his body in clouds, which crackle with energy.

My mouth curls into a cocky smile, and I launch a massive bolt of lightning at the man. It flies across the room in a flash and smashes directly into the sorcerer, which causes him to stagger a bit. Despite his confidence, he doesn't seem quite as powerful as one might expect.

My sister and Chorm prefer the more physical approach, and charge the sorcerer flat-out. The grey-skinned man recovers enough to attempt an attack: a fast flying could of black energy that explodes on impact; but Chrom easily side-steps the strike and my sister, not being the target, is fine with taking minor damage from the edge of the explosion.

The sorcerer doesn't get to attempt another blast, as Chrom closes in and forces the man to start dodging lest he be sliced in half. Reflet soon joins, bringing her axe down in much slower strikes that are even more easily dodged, but would surely kill in a single blow should they connect.

With me providing ranged support, the combination of three opponents proves too much for the sorcerer. Chrom gets a hit on the man's chest, I land another Thoron strike, and Reflet finally lands her attack, her axe embedding itself deep into the mans chest.

"Not over..." The sorcerer rasps, black blood coming from his mouth, "damn you all!"

I think that's the Vengeance technique. Credit to the man here, I don't think I could cast a giant-ass ball of hellfire with an axe in my chest.

Reflet acts quickly, all but tackling Chrom to the floor so that the fireball flies over their heads. Despite my penchant for speed, I can't dodge it like they could, and it nails me in the chest. Later, I would swear it followed me when I tried to avoid it.

As one might assume, coherent thought becomes quite the issue after being hit with a giant fireball. I'm much too busy trying to not scream in pain as I flail on the floor.

To my relief, the fire fades on it's own. Chorm and Reflet are quick to run over and hoist me to my feet, each looping an arm under one of my shoulders.

"Are you all right?" Chrom asks, glancing me over. "That's the end of him. Thanks to you we carried the day. We can rest easy now. At long last..."

That was a jinx if I ever heard one, and the universe seems to agree. My vision swims before me, throbbing red and purple as I stagger. Chrom and my sister make noises of concern, but Chrom is abruptly cut off mid-sentence.

It's not until my vision clears that I see the bolt of electric power in Chrom's chest, protruding like a dagger, and the matching sparks of magic still wreathing my hand. The connection isn't hard to make, and I can feel panic wash through my system.

"This is not your – your fault..." Chrom rasps, clutching at his chest. "Promise me you'll escape from this place... Please, go!"

As I back away from the corpse now lying at my feet, the dead sorcerer's laughter fills my ears, I can't tell if it's some magic, a curse perhaps, or if I'm hallucinating, and I grip my head as I make a mad dash for the exit.

My escape is short-lived as a shadow falls over me, causing me to whip around, and the last thing I see before blacking out is the blade of a silver axe directed at my head.

###

"Chrom... We have to do something." A girl's voice, high and young, sounds in my ears.

"What do you propose we do?" Another voice, a familiar voice... Yes, the one from my dream, the blue-haired man. Chrom.

I force open my eyes, prompting a gasp from the girl in front of me. I didn't even know I had my eyes closed at all, strange as that sounds. Then again, I don't seem to know a whole lot of anything at the moment.

"I see you're awake now." The blue-haired man says quietly.

"Hey there..." The girl whispers. Now that I can actually see, I can tell my guess of her being young was accurate. Her skin is a pale peach colour, and her eyes sparkle turquoise. She has blond hair tied in pigtails by the means of... buttons? Aside from that, she has a yellow dress supported by a crinoline. There are other details I could mention, but that's the gist.

Chrom is much more straight-forward. Aside from the short, dark-blue hair, his skin matches the girl next to him. He wears mostly blue, but has a white cape and thigh-high boots, one white, one blue, that end in metal shoes. Curiously, one shoulder is bare, showing an odd mark on his shoulder, while the other bears a metal pauldron.

"There are better places to take a nap than on the ground you know." Chrom smirks. "Give me your hand."

I comply, reaching up a hand. I catch a glimpse of something on my, a mark of my own, as the man pulls me up.

"Are you all right?" He asks.

"Yeah," I nod, glancing over myself. "Thanks Chrom."

So, it would seem I'm pale-skinned and quite thin. I think I have white hair, if that's not a feather dangling from my head, and (best of all) I have an awesome coat. Seriously, it's a shin-length black coat with purple highlight and gold trim, and I love it! I must have good taste in clothes.

"Ah, so you know who I am?" Chrom asks, minorly surprised.

"Uh... Kinda?" Unfortunately that's the best I can come up with. How does one explain that I know him from a dream when I don't even know my own past...

Wait, wait. I don't know my own past?! What the hell universe?! Fuck you! Seriously?! Ugh... So what do I know? Let's see... I know this man's name is Chrom, I know I have an awesome coat, I know I have a sister named Reflet...

"Reflet!" I shout, glancing around. "Where is she? She was here, right?"

"Pardon?" A new voice asks. "We found you alone, and do not think you can distract us from the fact that you recognize milord."

This guy is a knight, no other way to put it. He's decked out in blue and white armour, and I think I can see the collar of a suit underneath... Otherwise, his skin matches the other two, and he has short cut, brown hair and eyes of similar colour.

"Hey! I don't know why! I barely remember anything at all!" I protest, waving my arms out to my sides.

"Hey, I've heard of this! It's called amnesia!" Lissa gasps.

"It's called a load of pegasus dung." Fredrick corrects with a hard look towards myself. Addressing me again, he says "we're to believe you remember milord's name but not your own life?"

"Uh, yes!" I say, thinking this to be obvious. "Why would I not expect you to believe the truth?"

"We need to take the risk that he's lying Fredrick. If he does have amnesia, we can't very well leave him here, alone and confused. What sort of Shepherds would we be then?" Chorm admonishes. "Besides, maybe if we help him find this 'Reflet' she can provide some answers for us."

"Just the same, milord, I must emphasize caution. 'Twould not do to let a wolf into our flock." Fredrick warns.

"Right then." Chrom nods. "We'll take him back to town and sort this out there."

"Hey! Don't I have a say in this?!" I protest.

"Peace friend." Chrom makes a placating gesture. "I promise we'll hear all you have to say back in town. Now come, we must be off."

VIRION

Unexpected distractions are nothing new to myself. I pride myself on seizing the moment, especially when it comes to women. Usually though, the lady in question is awake to appreciate my illustrious self, and not lying face-down in the centre of the road...

The lady in question is not the norm for such parts of Ylisse. She seems to be Feroxi based on her dark skin, but the white hair and her clothes (a long coat with purple highlights and gold trim that seems to lack buttons, surprisingly clean bandages tied around her chest, and baggy white pants) suggest Plegian origin. Quite the mystery. At least she doesn't seem to be injured.

I doubt it would reflect well on myself to carry around an unconscious woman, especially considering that her coat doesn't cover her all that well, but just leaving her here would be highly dishonourable as well. I suppose I must take the hit to my reputation.

Unfortunately, she isn't quite as light as I hoped. She's not large, but muscled. The giant iron axe doesn't help any either. After a minute or two of struggling, I manage to lift her onto my back and arrange her axe so that it won't split my skull as I walk. I need to move my bow and arrows as well, lest they be damaged under her weight.

"My word..." I mutter to myself, staggering as I almost trip over a hole in the road. "This will be a most difficult trip indeed..."

With the added burden of carrying another, it takes a good three hours to stumble my way (elegantly!) into town. As predicted, I get many a strange look carrying around the lady on my shoulders, but I do my best to bear there suspicion gracefully... Which is rather challenging since I could not walk upright if I tried at the moment, so I look more like a hunchback than a noble.

"So much for a good impression here." I sigh. "The things I do for the fairer sex... Not that I wouldn't have helped a man, but it's much more poetic to say it that way."

I trudge my way to a nearby inn, dropping the owner a few coins to use one of his rooms. I receive a suspicious look, but he lets me in when I explain my intentions to be only pure... and hand him a few more coins.

Carrying the lady up to the room, I nudge open the door and place her gently on the bed. After I turn and close the door, I collapse right next to her.

"My word." I huff. "Th-That was not as effortless as it usually is."

There's more I could be doing right now: looking for help, making my way to Ylisstol, but I think a bit of rest is in order. Just for a moment, or a minute, or a few hours...

Completely spent for my efforts, I drift off; within the minute, I'm asleep.

So, uh, hi. I've seen so many retellings of Awakening with their respective twists and adaptations, this is just me throwing my metaphorical hat into the ring. Hello to anyone who came here from Five Stars where I mentioned this story would be coming, glad you could join me! We'll get to fun character interactions eventually; just got to get the basics out of the way here.

I was a bit stuck on how to get Reflet into the story. In the first draft of this chapter, I just had her appear beside Robin (or ##### for the moment. I wanted to do five question marks, but the website wouldn't let me), but that made the whole intro sequence a bit awkward, so I scrapped it. Instead, I'm using Virion (which is still awkward, but better than before). This way I can stagger introductions a bit, which is useful rather than having a whole five man band right off the bat.

Hope to hear from those of you reading this, be you from one of my other stories or new to me entirely. It feels weird not to have any reviews to respond to...