The Return of Shantae

The Dreary Century

In the twentieth century, Gearton was the city of innovation and creativity, an inventor's heavenly paradise where they can craft and create whatever comes to mind. Every inventor wishes to live there, for legend tells that a mysterious aura with its boundaries inspires anyone within it to glorious conclusions and resolutions. One would think that an academy would be responsible for the city's creation, but the city contains on a few schools but no form of high academia was reported.

The inventions of the city are not well known until they became beneficial to human society like Hamilton Soaques's Aqua Engine: the first ever working engine powered solely by water that stabilizes Hydrogen. But what stands out the most was Stanley Wurx's Wise-tone, a first ever multipurpose communication device that dose more than talking to another user. It was the greatest age for humanity to become closer with each other.

But after fifty years of such progress, the city itself was becoming visibly more bleaker and cloudier with every spring time, until after the end of the last brightest summer of 1999, where the clouds began to strengthen in mass and soon blocked out the sun's rays only making its form visible for the naked eye to bear witness. What the people didn't know back then is that this became the first global omen to set in, the Omen of the Dreary Century.

Upon the night of New Years Day that should ring in the new century, everyone around the world was ready to celebrate. When all the clocks struck midnight all over the world, Gearton was at the center of it all, they celebrated the hardest under the clear night of a full moon. But soon, the moon above the city changed into an eerie red, signaling a sudden Lunar Eclipse. An eclipse of a red skull gazing upon the world with a dreadful smile and a moan that would haunted the ages.

The second omen will never be forgotten, for the last omen brought an endless storm upon the city that also spread through the path of the sun (the equator), creating a nearly miserable world. This event effected the world greatly: the only sign of sunlight was below the poles of the earth, forest life under the clouds is dying, and every summer only grew colder and staler. The city that witnessed it all was no a drowning city of rain and dreamers. The creativity and inspiration that once flowed through was no more.

This went on for seventeen years and Gearton was never the same. On this day, no one ever found the reason for the Dreary Century, not even the greatest scientists of their time can find out why, it's only known that Gearton was at the center of the storm and people can't stop it no matter what. The once Haven of Inventions is now a City of Commerce low quality products and fishing. This was also the home a young freelancing guildsman without a past or family to call his own, this will be his story.
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This will be the premise of my first Shantae fanfiction! It may seem dark to you but I promise it will get better and I hope this marks something surprising for my readers to enjoy. I started writing this because I was planning to play the game but never actually got the chance to. I've seen the gameplay and I loved it, but it's not the same when you actually play as her! This is my tribute to the Shantae fans, see you in the next chapter!
-Kanadzuchi