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Prologue
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War… war never changes.

For as long as mankind has existed, before the dawn of civilization, before even the first man sharpened the first spear, humanity has always been so quick and eager in its attempts to try and destroy one another. Their desire for power and control is an ever-present trait among them, and one that was there at the very beginning. Since its birth as a species, mankind has waged war upon war with those who would do so much as disagree with their values and desires.

Every war ever fought was one spawned from just that; a mere conflict of interest between two groups of people. But a conflict of interest is all too common among members of any intelligent species, and thus war has remained a constant and consistent factor throughout all of human history, never changing, only evolving.

Because war never changes. It's the methods of waging it that do.

For with time and evolution came more and more methods to better solve that conflict of interest, with each new weapon becoming more efficient than the last. A sharpened stick became a tipped spear, which then became the arrow to a bow, which itself evolved into a crossbow. And when humanity re-discovered fire through the use of gunpowder, your capacity for destruction only continued to grow. From there your primitive systems of conflict went on to become a fully realised machine of war, one capable of shaking an entire continent to pieces… and it did.

Within the first half of the 20th century, Europe had erupted into two World Wars that shook the entire planet to its very core. The sheer scale of each conflict forced you to advance at a rapid pace, and as a result your weapons, your means of death and destruction became crueler and crueler until it was impossible to go any further. It was there that several thousand years of war culminated in the single greatest discovery in all of human history.

Your age-old desire to destroy and control all that stood in your way led you to create a weapon of unimaginable destruction, one with a power which rivalled that of the sun, and one that could reduce an entire city to ash and dust within a matter of mere seconds.

You created the atomic bomb.

A weapon so cruel that only you could have been the ones to design it… and you used it twice in the same week. [AP1] [AP2] When the rest of the world learned of the power that had made two cities vanish within the same three days, every other major world power was quick to try and replicate it for themselves. For a time it seemed as though the coming years would be your last, as the next war would no doubt be one fought with this new and devastating power. Most feared that the world would come to an end within the decade.

And yet, surprisingly, it didn't. Against all odds, your species managed to quell its bloodlust for enough to turn this weapon of mass destruction into over a century's worth of progress, peace, and global prosperity.

But war never changes… and neither do you.

For there wasn't really any peace during that time, was there? There was only a false sense of safety brought forth by decades of relative silence. While humanity continued to squander the planet's precious resources, tensions between foreign powers only continued to rise. Instead of war there was nothing, and a hundred years of nothing only served to make you restless.

No, there was never any peace; the world was merely waiting.

And by the time it was done waiting, by the time the house of cards that you'd built your utopia upon finally came crashing down, your entire species had already set the stage for complete global annihilation. All that was left was for someone to pull the trigger.

And once they did the entire world burned in atomic fire, billions of lives and millions of species wiped away all at once. Anything that survived was killed in the resulting global fallout… well… almost. Whatever wildlife survived the blasts was mutated and warped by the resulting radiation. Meanwhile what little remained of your species fled underground, hiding in your 'vaults' while the rest of the planet died around you, proof of your selfish obsession with self-preservation and of your refusal to die.

Now, 200 years later and your species is but a shell of its former self, crawling around on the scarred and shattered surface of your planet while nature struggles to recover from your wrath. It's a shame I cannot go there myself; I imagine that your world, or what's left of it, would be a perfect breeding ground for my forces. I am able to see its history and know its rules, but I am unable to be there myself. This only further begs the question of how and why this knowledge was even gifted to me in the first place. It is… strange to say the least, that suddenly and without warning I was given such a vast understanding of a world so similar to my own, yet so incredibly different, one which prior to now I hadn't even known existed.

I'll admit that the idea of such worlds residing within an entirely separate universe was one I've briefly considered in the past, but to know that once such world actually exists is… surprising. Still, for this much knowledge about something of this magnitude to be shared with me and me alone is suspicious. I have reason to believe that the other has been made aware of this as well. Whether or not that's the case, there's still the question of why?

… I shouldn't waste my time asking such questions. Whatever the answer may be I am certain that I will know it in time. Right now I have bigger problems to worry about. People are starting to disappear after all… fortunately for me those people seem to be the ones who pose a threat to my cause. It will be interesting to see how this will change things going forward. If nothing else this will certainly make things interesting…

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RWBY
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As the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon and the broken moon slowly rose to replace it, a thin wave of energy rippled across all of Remnant, so small and insignificant that the most one could have felt was a slight breeze and a light bit of static. But in that very moment, four beings bound together by a shared fate vanished from where they stood. It was instantaneous; within the same second they were there and then they were not, leaving those who stood witness none the wiser as to what had just transpired…

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Colours of the Commonwealth
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At the same time, within a small region fa faraway world, four beings appeared out of thin air. Scattered throughout the region, these four beings fell to the ground, unconscious and alone with strange clothes on their backs and bizarre weapons at their sides. Those who stood witness were none the wiser as to what had just transpired…

A/N: Welcome! I just want to start off by saying thank you for taking the time to stop by and read this little project of mine! Now I will admit that it's been forever since I've written a fanfiction of any kind, and this is my first time attempting to write a crossover, so there's bound to be some mistakes, inconsistencies, etc. which I will be more than happy to fix over time.

That being said, I am a bit of a lazy bastard, so don't expect updates to be very frequent. I do also have a lot of career-related stuff I'm working on in addition to this story, so keep that in mind as well. Still though, I hope to post at least one new chapter every month, but I can't make any promises in that regard.

But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little teaser of a prologue! I hope to see you all again in Chapter 1: Lost and Found.

Till then, stay safe and stay inside!