AEHU/Plot/Plot Sketch Chapter 0

Intro

Magus and Raqh prepare to enter the DBT in the Bastard Timeline that comes between CE and AE:HU; Raqh supplies the Levantine and Magus a time gate. Once the gate is open, Raqh attacks Magus to protect the Power he serves, but is defeated.

Magus confronts the Dream Devourer in a scene that plays out almost exactly like the CT:DS bonus ending, only instead of Crono & co. fighting the Dream Devourer after Magus gets blown back, Raqh hops in and receives his much-awaited annihilation. Magus gets up after this happens, pleads with Schala fruitlessly, and then decides his whole life has been for nothing and tosses away his memories.

It is revealed that the whole intro up to now is playing out before Belthasar on a screen; he comments that this is FATE's prediction of how things will proceed. Mr. Smith interrupts Belthasar, Belthasar slightly irked, but Mr. Smith catches his interest by reporting that a robot has specifically asked to see one "Belthasar," and provided Belthasar's description. Robo enters, just having awoken from a near 100-year stasis with important items acquired in CE within his care.

Belthasar gives Robo a guided tour of the new-and-improved Chronopolis and brings him up to speed on the current situation, including the fact that he now operates as a regular Chronopolis researcher by the name "Gracian Lebathras," and that Dr. Rosalind Ashtear is current Director of the research facility. Between CE and now, Chronopolis has been discovered by the Central Regime and is in a precarious situation, although Belthasar and Ashtear have been able to secure additional funding from the Central Regime up till now. Robo asks if the plan is still to save Schala from the Darkness Beyond Time, and Belthasar answers affirmatively. Belthasar explains why AI FATE is a crucial component of this mission.

Belthasar secures Director Ashtear's permission to conduct a test of AI FATE's predictive capability against the historical record, focusing on the years 606AG through 621AG. Belthasar explains to Robo that he's particularly interested in this time period because a man named Raqh built up a cult focused on a Power with properties eerily similar to those of the Devourer who lies beyond Time's Eclipse. In 621, Raqh disappeared into a huge distortion of spacetime-bending features judging from the fact that he took all of Giant's Claw with him. If Raqh found a way into the Darkness Beyond Time, Belthasar can use Robo's medieval counterpart to observe the process directly and perfect it for his own use later on.

Belthasar asks Robo to assist in accessing records of 606AG stored on Chronopolis' mainframe while he feeds a list of assumptions into AI FATE. Interspersed with opening credits and scenes of Dream Schala's birth from Magus' discarded memories in the Darkness Beyond Time, Belthasar assures Robo that he is fully confident in FATE's predictive capability; this is meant to foreshadow precisely that FATE cannot predict all.