Butterfly Effect

**Butterfly Effect**is a Story Arc of the the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Interra and follows the perspective of rebellious girl Melissa Powell and young thug Risha Vayne. It is followed by Butterfly Effect II : Masquerade.

## Main Arc

### A Strange Wonderland

Attracted by rumors of a strange warehouse in a big town of the New York megalopolis, teenagers Risha Vayne and Melissa Powell stumble an undeground laboratory during a nocturnal expedition. They quickly investigate but are soon neutralized by an unseen person and put to sleep.

Risha and Melissa awaken in a strange, fantasy-like where they can sculpt the reality around them like lucid dreaming. A mysterious presence introduced as the Cheshire Cat tells them they are in Wonderland, a Mindscape for the dreamers. The pair has been given the ability to dream lucidly, but it turns out to be a double-edged blade. Dark creatures known as Shadows attack the pair, who runs for their lives.

They are waken up in time by young reporter Jack Aster who was also investigating the place, and he befriends them, helping them exit the undeground lab. The pair is relieved, and goes back home. On her way home, Melissa then notices strange, abstract, motivating graffiti on a nearby wall, but does not investigate any more.

### An Endless Dream

However, Risha and Melissa find themselves back together in Wonderland the next night. They understand they will not be able to escape the dream, each night another chase, another danger. The Cheshire Cat guides the pair to a woman named Alice Rosch who helps them. Alice has been a prisoner of the dream for years, having lapsed into a coma while searching the dream-world for clues about her father Devon Rosch's death, which she believes wasn't natural. Alice gives Risha and Melissa two possible clues, two men close to her father : scientific genius Gene Weisner and street artist Mark Danaus.

Risha and Melissa emerge from the dream and decide to seek Gene Weisner. On their way, they meet a man who has escaped from a local asylum, Joshua Skye, a self-proclaimed prophet, charismatic but delusional. He offers Risha and Melissa to "show them who they really are" but they dismiss him and meet Gene.

Gene, an amiable, intelligent man, and the head of the **Heartbeat Inc.** pharmaceutical industry, reveals Devon was his teacher and taught him everything about the science of dreams. Gene has since been seeking to replicate his success by elaborating a way to alter dreams with technology. However, he has no additional informations to give them.

### Creativity and Shadow

The pair then searches and encounters Mark Danaus, who turns out to be the strange graffiti's creator. Excentric and kind, the artist encourages Melissa and Risha while remaining mysterious and vague. As the night is falling, Mark encourages Melissa and Risha to sleep in his studio.

They do and, once in Wonderland again, and the Cheshire Cat tells them only the **Mad Hatter** who owns this place can save them. Before they can find the Hatter, they are attacked by Shadows once more. This time, Joshua is with them, and seems to have a measure of control on them. Joshua explains Shadows are embodiments of mankind's repressed desires and seek only to be acknowledged and embraced. Melissa and Risha obviously refuse to acknowledge the atrocious, shadowy monsters as part of them, and they confront them as well as Joshua. Seemingly defeated, Joshua disappears and the dream ends.

### Masterminds

When they are awakened, the two are lured by a strange, dark silhouette towards the laboratory. They encounter a strangely emotionless man calling himself Ten. Ten reveals he is the one who grafted an apparatus known as a Dream Caterpillar within their brains, a marvel of neurosurgery able to grant the ability of lucid dreaming. Ten tells the pair he needed them to be "awakened" this way in order to fight the true threat of the city. He directs them towards a villa, before leaving.

The villa turns out to be a decoy, hiding a laboratory where horrible experiments were performed on human subjects, altering their subconscious in order to make them into fighting machines. The culprit is none other than Gene Weisner himself. As he returns to his home, he doesn't seem surprised to see the pair investigating his secret lab. He taunts them by saying he murdered Alice's father to steal her research. When Risha threatens him, he forces him to direct his gun to Melissa instead, showing he hypnotized them with his RedRose neural implant during their first meeting. He then calmly asks them to leave, promising to destroy them if they do anything.

### Chaos Spreads

Meanwhile, Risha is asked by his boss to sell an experimental, expensive drug known as Bombyx, to rich clients. He does so, but soon notices something is off. Drugged individuals become intensively violent and attack eachother. Melissa finds out Joshua is behind all the chaos, using Bombyx as a way to transport individuals to the dreamworld and attack them with Umbrae, unleashing forcibly the desires of their **ids**. The pair confronts Joshua once again but this time, the madman manages to reach Melissa, breaking the barriers of her mind.

Melissa discovers she was once Viridi Powell, an unstable girl with a history of mutilation and murder, who was lobotomized into becoming who she is now. Joshua's powers fracture her mind and allow Viridi to resurface, turning Melissa from a kindhearted and joyful girl into a chaotic mesh of emotions with a thirst for blood. By the time Melissa manages to compose herself, Joshua is long gone.

### The Mastermind's Plan

Guided by Ten, the pair learns of Gene's true intentions : with the knowledge gained from Devon's notes and his own experiments, he attempts to create a gigantic machine to synchronise all subconscious minds to his own, allowing him to modulate mankind's free will and harmonize it to his own will. Gene, once confronted, acknowledges it, citing Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a source of inspiration and desiring nothing but to bring mankind to a more peaceful era. The pair attemps to attack Gene, but Joshua interrupts the assault. Gene reveals Joshua was his pawn, hypnotized from the beginning to sow discord in the town and weaken mankind's mental defenses.

The pair returns at night to sabotage Gene's machine to prevent it from activating. They fight Joshua one last time, and with a last endeavor, Risha pushes him out of the window and kills him. The Shadows diminish in numbers and the machine explodes, saving the city. Yet the pair does not manage to shake the feeling something isn't quite right.

### King of Hearts

Mark's cryptic advice to a still-recovering Melissa allow her to understand that feeling : the pair fell victim to an illusion. A quick trip to the dreamworld makes Melissa and Risha understand the machine they destroyed was an illusion : the Palace of Hearts, as Gene calls it, is still functional. Melissa and Risha rush to destroy it, but are stopped by Jack Aster who reveals he was blackmailed by Gene into fighting them. Melissa almost kills him, but regains control at the last second, and Jack lives.

Back to the real world, the pair attempts to destroy the real machine, but are stopped by Gene's mysterious secretary Bianca Reinetta. By the time they defeat her, Gene has activated the machine from a remote location. Dreamworld and real world begin to merge as the pair has to battle a gigantic, godlike entity known as the **King of Hearts**, the embodiment of Gene's tyrannical will and ambitions.

The pair weakens severely the King, but Gene's power over mankind is almost absolute, and he keeps growing stronger. When all seems lost, however, the King disintegrates, turning to dust. The battle against Gene Weisner's insane ambitions has finally ended.

### Broken Minds

However, when the two Consciousness Levels are once again separated, Risha and Melissa discover the clash has wounded the dreamworld, and with it mankind's subconscious, plunging the inhabitants of the town into a vegetative state, a phenomenon quickly spreading to the rest of the US and soon the entire world. Meanwhile, Mark Danaus has disappeared, a puddle of blood behind the artist.

A quick investigation allow the pair to find Bianca. The secretary reveals she was Gene's twelvth experiment, his Queen of Hearts, and that everything was orchestrated by the man called himself "Ten" - Gene's tenth experiment, ruthlessly vengeful, who shot Gene during the process to kill the man and wound the dreamworld. Melissa and Risha return one last time to the dreamworld and find Ten, serenly standing among the rubble.

Ten reveals he was left unable to dream and possess any trace of imagination. He planned to take revenge on Gene and show the world what it means to be truly devoid of creativity and individual thought. Now that mankind has been defeated, he can dream again. Melissa and Risha challenge him, and although Ten's enhanced mind combined with his synchronization with the barren dreamworld makes him a formidable foe, Melissa embraces her dark instincts and slaughters him after he admits to killing Mark.

### From Darkness, Salvation

The dreamworld collapses as mankind is on the verge of extinction ; a dark pit appears under the pair's feet and swallows them in a chaotic, sinister world, the Shadow Realm. There, they find Joshua's consciousness has merged with the Umbrae and has become their Avatar. Joshua reveals he was blind ; as such, Gene never hypnotized him. He played Ten and Gene against eachother to create the situation as it is now ; a destroyed dreamworld that can be rebuilt, rebuilt as Joshua envisions it, a world where the repression of the superego no longer exists.

Joshua progressively turns into a titanic Demon-like being, an embodiment of mankind's deepest fears and forbidden desires, but the heroic resolve of Melissa and Risha resonates with the dreamworld's essence and gives them the strength to defeat Joshua and seal back the passage between the dreamworld and the Umbrae's chaotic world of impulses. And when Melissa and Risha surface once again in the barren dreamworld, they find a silhouette clad in blue with an eccentric top hat - the Mad Hatter, Mark Danaus.

Mark introduces himself as the Avatar of Dreams, embodiment of mankind's imagination and aspirations. Now freed from Joshua's dark influence, Mark summons his power and restores life to the dreamland, saving mankind. After resurrecting Alice as well, he tells her her father's mind was preserved into the Cheshire Cat, an eternal watcher of the dreamworld, before finally freeing Alice from her coma. Mark then attempts to release Melissa and Risha from the Caterpillar, but Melissa refuses, having found a world that resembles her. Risha goes back home and Melissa declares her love to Mark, choosing to live with him from now on.

## Others Arcs

### Sigma's Tale

A Chaon-corrupted Sigma finds herself in Wonderland, seeking to a cure for her troubled mind. After encountering Mark, she finds Joshua and the latter, sensing potential in her, fractures her mind using his powers. Sigma manages to piece herself back and after facing her Specter half, Xeisoul, emerges complete once again. She thanks Joshua, indebted to him, and leaves once again to her own adventures.

But Sigma soon finds herself once again needing Joshua's help. She returns, asking him to help her piece back her repressed memories, and Joshua is happy to oblige. Sigma fights through her own mind, clashing with her nightmares and her past and ends up fighting her true self, emerging victorious. She then departs definitely from that world, having obtained power within.

### Lonan's Tale

Lonan Darcia visits inadvertantly Viridi's world while looking for Venimi. As a young Viridi is threatening to kill her classmates, Lonan confronts her during night and attempts to guide her. After fighting through her nightmares and the Venimi that come from them, Viridi mistakes Lonan for her "master" Lucifer and Lonan, using the misunderstanding to his advantage, makes a Pactum with her, before leaving.

Lonan returns to Viridi's world, in her subconscious, as she is being lobotomized. He attempts to save her but the chaos submerges her, and Viridi is killed by a trespasser. Lonan fights that Paradoxical version of his secret love Lara Lane, and is forced to kill her. Afterwards, having witnessed the deaths of two beings close to him, a heartbroken Lonan departs.

## Characters

* Melissa Powell
* Viridi Powell
* Risha Vayne
* Ten
* Joshua Skye
* Alice Rosch
* Devon Rosch
* Mark Danaus
* Gene Weisner
* Bianca Reinetta
* Jack Aster

## Trivia

* Butterfly Effect bears strong influence from the game series **Persona** as well as **The World Ends With You**.
* Butterfly Effect's theme song, as chosen by its author, is **I Dare You** by Shinedown.
* Butterfly Effect's name is a pun : butterfly effect is a term in chaos theory expressing how a single, insignificant event can open up massive possibilities, but this is also a reference to the philosophical Butterfly's Dream.