Butterfly Effect III : Loyalty

**Butterfly Effect III : Loyalty**is a Story Arc of the the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Interra and follows the perspective of professional gamer Rainbow. It is an indirect sequel to Butterfly Effect II : Masquerade and is followed by Butterfly Effect IV : Bonds.

## Storyline

### A Strange Invitation

Professional gamer Rainbow receives mysterious calls from a masked number who asks her to participate to a tournament. Although highly doubtful, she finally accepts when the person keeps appealing to her competitive side and taunting her. She meets the person, who turns out to be Avatar of Masks David Noachia. David shows Rainbow a secret access to a great videogame corporation, **WildKard**. Inside, they find a strange apparatus similar to a virtual reality helmet. Rainbow puts it on.

She is immediately transported to the Videogame Realm, a materialization of mankind's common cultural knowledge and enjoyment of videogames. David - able to manifest itself in that world at will - explains the device is no mere virtual device, but an item similar to the Dream Caterpillar that alters its bearer's consciousness, transporting it to another Mindscape. David admits to using Rainbow as a pawn as a way to fight against a new evil : a presence known as the **Ace of Hearts** is slowly corrupting the realm from within.

### Get the Gang Together

Rainbow is obviously infuriated, and an easygoing David tells her to relax, and to enjoy the unique experience - although he warns her that if she dies in this realm, her Soul will be fractured forever. David furthermore tells her there are five other girls like her within the realm, five girls he brought in order for him to have a perfect army to fight the Ace.

Rainbow finds herself in a gigantic racing game where she finds tactical genius Spark. After saving her from strange semi-material corporate agents in a close race, the two escape the dimension only to find themselves in a desolate town modeled after the **Team Fortress** series. There, the pair finds country girl and pro shooter Pomme.

The same happens with costume designer Jewel in a **League of Legends**-like tower defense game, hyperactive dance pro Pinky in a fragment of the Pokemon Realm, and innocent gamer girl Fluffy in a world modeled after old-school RPGs. In that last world, serving as the final boss, the group confronts Joshua, god of Umbrae, who attempts to trick the group into killing David who is responsible for their imprisonment in the Videogame realm ; but the protagonists, having grown fond of the carefree Avatar, refuse and battle Joshua, resulting in his escape.

### The Ace Appears

After reuniting, the six heroines and David find mysterious bartender Omega who gives them cryptic advice and guide them towards their next step. There, inside a chaotic tower, they manage to reach and confront the mysterious Ace - a literal Ace, Ace Weisner, a fifteen-year old child who has successfully infiltrated and hacked the Videogame Realm, planning on becoming its god. However, something has corrupted him, causing him to slowly become insane.

His power surpassing by far the others' as he is the Territory Lord here, he crushes the team before sealing David's face with an opaque mask, preventing him from breathing and make him die a slow death. The group runs away, Rainbow manages to escape the tower and asks Omega for help. The bartender manages to break Ace's cursed mask, but in the process, turns David into a human. A very disoriented and barely conscious David, confronted with guilt about his past actions, briefly cries before falling unconscious.

### Joshua's Trials

The six heroines, now protecting the weakened Avatar, keep advancing, but Joshua intercepts them before they can reach Ace's lair, seeking to finish off David. Another battle begins as Joshua confronts each girl with visions of their own nightmares, but the six emerge victorious. Joshua smiles and offers Rainbow a prize as a reward for her bravery : a red knife.

The team goes through several videogame worlds, including a **rhythm** and dancing game arena, a **shoot-em-up** stageand a **trading card game** simulation. However, the last world before Ace has been sabotaged by Joshua himself : each girl finds herself isolated in a post-apocalyptic realm, fighting hordes of zombies. Rainbow tries to fight against the zombie, but the knife in her pocket begins to overwhelm her, using her competitive spirit to give her pleasure slaughtering enemies. At the same time, Joshua's corrupting magic makes her see visions of killing her new friends, and as she manages to find Pomme, she finds out Pomme has already been infected by Joshua's visions as well, certain that Rainbow will kill her.

Being yelled at and threatened by Pomme for her perceived betrayal, haunted by the desire to slaughter her, Rainbow forces herself out of her trance-like state by stabbing herself in the heart with the knife. As she does so, she finds an unknown presence near her, supporting her. Rainbow opens her eyes and finds out the all-powerful knife has shattered against her heart, unable to pierce it. Pomme snaps out of her own trance after seiing Rainbow's devotion and sacrifice, and joins Rainbow to save the other girls.

### Fight against the Dark

Helping Fluffy fight against her own darker thoughts, Pinky overcome the emptiness behind her smile, Spark let go of her inferiority complex and fear of being alone, and finally preventing Jewel with making a pact with Joshua, Pomme and Rainbow get everyone back with them but David and confront Joshua before he can do anything to kill the weakened Avatar. Joshua turns into a terrifying form once again, but he is defeated, and before he can plan another attack, Ace detects him and forces him to flee.

The group finally finds Ace's room at the top of his twisted castle, and discover he was an orphan, son of Gene Weisner and Bianca Reinetta, and sought only to bring them back by becoming a god-like Avatar. They fight Ace one last time, as the corrupted orphan is twisted into more and more monstrous forms, finally defeating him and breaking temporarly the Curse within him. A now-freed Ace, disoriented and broken, discretely leaves the realm.

To protect the realm's stability, the six girls, blessed by a slowly recovering David and by Omega, introducing himself as the Avatar of Optional Bosses, become the world's new Avatar, willingly paying the price of sacrificing their lives in the real world to guide forever the gamers within the realm. And peace seems to have come at last to that realm.

## Other Arcs

### A Glimmer of Starlight

Disillusioned gamer and hacker Starlight finds herself in possession of one of Ace's helmets. After a recent break-up partly due to video game rivalries and blaming everything on the inequality of videogames, she attempts to hack into the Videogame realm and become its ruler, altering the world to her whims to create a universe "without inequality or rejection".

However, Rainbow perceives Starlight's attempt and intercepts the hacker, confronting her beliefs and offering her a place by her side to prove her that although video games can lead to rivalry and conflict, they also offer ways to become better. Rainbow offers Starlight a place as a seventh Avatar alongside the others. This timeline leads to Butterfly Effect IV : Bonds.

### The Powells' Crowning

After the events of Butterfly Effect III, a now fully recovered David, ready to acknowledge the full potential of mankind, after discussing with Mark Danaus, decides to offer Melissa and Viridi Powell a place as the Avatars of Mankind's infinite potential. The crowning is celebrated both by the Avatars of the Videogame Realm and visitors Lowell and Yser, Omega's sister, from the depths of that realm.

## Characters

* Rainbow
* Spark
* Pomme
* Fluffy
* Pinky
* Jewel
* David Noachia
* Ace Weisner
* Omega

## Trivia

* Characters in Butterfly Effect III bear a strong resemblance to **My Little Pony** main characters. David explains it as "neighboring Timelines which are a mirror of eachother".