Nasuverse Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou (Nanoha Crossover)

[lethum]

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou
Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
​

It was a beautiful day in Ramaqem, a city of tourism and vacation resorts in the tropical regions of Mid Childa. Or at least, it promised to be. The light blue sky chased away the black, dark blue and purple of the night, and the sun began raising from the east behind the sea. The few wisps of clouds present in the sky had been painted pink by the atmosphere, and the daytime wildlife had begun to stir.


Emiya Shirou, Sophomore in Homurabara and all around nice guy was already bathed and dressed. But it was more accurate to say that he was still awake. Today was the last day of the vacation he was on, but the time difference between Ramaqem and Fuyuki meant that that particular Saturday [equivalent] morning in Ramaqem happened simultaneously with Fuyuku City's Saturday night.


To avoid Jet-Lag (a term from Earth that subsisted within the social circle of people born or raised on Earth), he and Vivio would leave in the morning from Mid Childa, arriving late at night at Earth and staying awake straight through the night until some time in the mid-afternoon on Sunday. That way they'd wake up on Monday refreshed and ready for school. The long sleep and their own magical natures would help take care of their tiredness.


For that reason, they were up and about before the sun came up, leaving the adults to sleep in after the late night they'd had partying and drinking. This included Einhart, who had apparently not been able to deny Hayate given that she was snoozing on a pair of kitchen chairs under a blanket. Vita was on the couch and holding on to Zafira's wolf form like it was a giant teddy bear, while Shamal rested against a corner covered by a veritable hill of towels. Dry ones, thankfully. The other people who'd come to Ramaqen weren't visible, but the summer house they had been staying at had many rooms, with a lot of them closed when Shirou had passed them in the morning. He dared not open them, wary of what he'd find behind unlocked doors locks.


It had been a party with Lady Hayate involved, after all.


They'd made their goodbyes the day before, so Shirou was only waiting for Vivio to meet up with him in the reception of the resort so they could leave for the Dimensional Travel Station and from there to Earth. The employees that puttered around looked wide awake, probably used to working odd hours but nevertheless enjoying the reprieve from what their many guests and clients put them through while they were awake. Shirou was personally looking forward to cooking his own meals, following recipes both tested and experimental and eating them with friends and family.


"Shirou!"


Turning towards the source of the voice, the redhead saw his blonde friend run up to him, waving one of her arms in the air. His luggage had been stored by Lotus Blade, so the only thing on him other than his clothes was the skintight metallic-looking bracelet on his wrist. Smiling at his friend, Shirou asked her.


"Are you ready, Vivio?"


The cloned Sankt Kaiser pouted.


"I can't find my camera. It's not where I thought it was and I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find it. I'll just get Nanoha-mama to send it over later."


With that, Vivio intertwined her arm with Shirou's and began pulling him away. As a vacationing spot, Ramaqen was littered with details small and big that aimed at catering for the whims of the visitors without harming their reputation or prestige. One of them was the Skyway, a relatively simple illusion and detection field combo that created a network of translucent tunnels in the sky, invisible from the outside and usable by mages who could fly in order to avoid the traffic in the ground. However, teleportation and transport magic was still prohibited in all but a few exceptional cases, and there was a speed limit inside the Skyway.


Vivio and Shirou walked over to the closest ground entrance to the Skyway, a platform clearly identified by a big sign and a distinctive glowing circle on the ground. After registering their names and destination at the attendant, they flew over the city until they arrived at the Dimensional Travel Terminal, their destination. The two had been involved deeply in a conversation about their opponents in the (Pairs) Tournament where they had won a vacation to Ramaqen as part of the reward for getting first place. The high point of the tournament had been the fact that two rival criminal organizations had been using it as a proxy battlefield to settle their disputes with a fair third-party referee, with everyone else getting caught in the crossfire. While doing their best to cheat their way to victory.


At the end, the team that Shirou and Vivio formed had ended up disqualifying the star representatives from both sides, who had joined forces with the reigning winners in order to defeat them. Magical Enhancement Drugs and a few illegal artifacts were the tools used by the champions from the last year to cheat, but the combination of Shirou and Vivio was simply too good for the other competitors and the two newcomers had ended up winning the tournament. Einhart had had to beg off, given that her position in her job had not allowed her to be present for the fights, so she had only been around to watch some of the matches.


Sadly, at the Travel Terminal they got delayed. Somebody back at the resort had managed to wake early, and had called and stopped Vivio before they left for Earth in order to at least send her the photo data from her camera wirelessly, but it was taking too long. The meteorite rain that had fallen the night before had apparently contained a special material that was interfering with the communications, making the normally fast process last for what seemed like ages.


"You go ahead, Shirou. I'll finish this in a moment and get there before you know it," Vivio said.


"I don't know, Vivio, just leaving you like this is..." Shirou protested, his people helping complex reared it's extremely hard head.


"It's okay, Shirou," Vivio offered, "I'm actually safer here in Ramaqen than in Fuyuki, with all the vampires and sliders and crazy mages and giant crystal spider aliens," she finished saying with a small smile on her face.


The joke served to calm Shirou down. As did the funny idea of giant crystal spider aliens. Vivio just stood in place, tapping her foot while the data transferred.


"Still...Vivio, if it doesn't take too long I can just wait with you."


Shirou was calmer than before, but still not convinced. But even so he had a feeling that he would end up going ahead. Vivio was the person who knew him best and who knew perfectly well which of his buttons to push, so he was wary about pushing her too far and finding their kitchen devoid of anything but instant meals and cutlery. Or worse, fast food leftovers. He had cried the last time it happened. And then he'd convinced Sacred Heart to auto-translate evrything that Vivio saw, heard or spoke into the ancient Zulu language for a week.


"Shirou..."


Shirou gave in.


"Alright, you win. But," Shirou said, raising his hand to stop Vivio from talking, "I'll wait for you on the other side, alright?" he asked with a warm smile on his face.


Vivio smiled back at him, looking relieved. As he moved over to the completely empty outgoing line, he wondered what Vivio was relieved about. Something like his saving-people-thing resulting in overprotective episodes never crossed his mind, even if his friends and acquaintances had seen them become a familiar sight over the years. Not a common one, by any means, but for example everyone remembered the time when Shirou tricked Vita into missing a mission by feeding her a steady supply of food until it was too late for her to go.


Vita had been reprimanded, and the actual mission had still been successful, so Shirou had only gotten a stern talking to from the adults in his life. He had been frustrated for weeks following the death of his father, Kiritsugu, and it had been far from the only repetitive task he had done in order to work off his heightened temper. Wasting a whole afternoon at school after gym class to try jumping a bar without magic, training flight magic with Vivio, cooking all sorts of dishes for Vita...Shirou's actions during this time had gained him fame as the 'Helping Terminator' in Mid Childa.


Shirou had heard of the term, but like Nanoha with the <<White Devil>> title, he hadn't quite made the connection that they were talking to him and not about Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in the Terminator movies. Or about Amuro Ray, in Nanoha's case. They never paid much attention to those kind of discussion in the first place, and even then, those tended to happen outside their earshot.


The process of leaving, however, wasn't without problems. It seemed like the data on the targets for the Dimensional Transfer spell had been corrupted by the meteor shower, so instead of appearing inside the empty building in Shinto that the TSAB bought and maintained, he had to choose between appearing in Homurabara Gauken (which was the backup location in their database for some reason) or giving the coordinates of his house to the company in charge of the Dimensional Travel Terminal.


As his house was technically a classified location he couldn't give them the coordinates, and he didn't have the knowledge of the dimensional topography in Fuyuki or the skill in magical theory to calculate the coordinates of another safe arrival point. Doing the math in his head, he supposed that he would arrive too late to the school for anyone to be there, even guards or janitors, so he gave a short message to the attendant to let Vivio know he'd stick around the school building to wait for her.


Moving to the Translocation Cylinder at last, Shirou looked around the terminal one last time. Spying Vivio taking a spot in the line right behind an aged and wrinkled couple that was now talking with the attendant, Shirou waved at her, trying to catch her attention.


A voice came from the walls of the Cylinder, pleasant yet gender neutral. "Please, remember that active spell casting, luggage outside limits regulated in the polities of Dim'Sea Travels or the detection of illegal substances are grounds for immediate transfer abortion and-"


Finally catching Vivio's eyes with his own, he smiled at her and waved, feeling the magical power in the artifact that surrounded him rise and refine itself, undergoing rapid and guided mana linking by the hardware performing the Dimensional Transfer spell. The excess mana associated into junk data, and quickly underwent a decaying process during which they steadily released a soft white light. All in all, it was the official end to his and Vivio's short vacation and return to the normalcy of life on Earth as normal High Schoolers.


Despite what a somewhat widespread belief in Administrated Worlds said, Dimensional Travel was not instant. This mistake was repeated in all manner of places, like movies, jokes, novels, poems or even in official statements. In reality, a high sensitivity of a special type, one typically found in high ranking mages and people with Rare Skills, was enough to knowingly compress or dilate the internal trip-time of the spell, within a region rigidly defined by the spell itself.


Shirou was one of those who could do this, but he usually spent as little time waiting in transit as he could. He spent the transfer period deciding what he'd cook next, and where he would buy the ingredients. He wasn't sure of where he would appear in the school, besides knowing that he wouldn't be trapped inside a locked building.


But instead of the quiet and empty school grounds he was expecting, Shirou was treated to an explosion of sounds as soon as he appeared. Instincts and training took over and made him jump several meters back in an instant, simultaneously allowing Lotus Blade to leave its bracelet form in exchange for a full sized gleaming katana. It was a single silvery metal piece, even if the texture of the hilt was functionally identical to that of a normal sword.


"「瞬閧」 Instant Coax, 「Load」"


It was just in time. Shirou held Lotus Blade's katana form in a fully defensive stance, when something hit him with enough power to send him flying back towards the trees, almost to the entrance of the school. Only the automatic flight spell cast by Lotus Blade allowed Shirou to land safely, instead of simply rolling in midair until he crash-landed into a tree. All that Shirou managed to see before he was sent flying was that whoever deal the blow wasn't even staring at him.


"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Shirou cried once he regained his bearings.


He had been thrown away as an afterthought, but the force in the blow had been incredibly strong. With his body automatically settling into a combat stance, he vaguely spied a girl in red on the edges of his vision, and distinctly saw a pair of men standing a couple meters apart. One of them was dressed in close fitting black armor and what looked like a long red open coat, while the other wore a blue armored skin-suit and metallic pauldrons.


The one in red and black had the black and white Bakuya and Kanshou in his hands, while the other had the red Gae Bolg. His inner being automatically processed the information on the weapons, as the one who dressed in blue and wielded the red Irish spear of legend began walking in his general direction. Simply by watching him move, Shirou understood the difference in skill. It was clear that Shirou stood little to no chance to win.


"You're not half bad, for a kid," the man in blue called out with a drawl. With more time to process things, Shirou noted that the other man had red eyes and blue hair styled into a simple ponytail. "The problem is... since you aren't a part of the war, you are an outsider. And the rules say that outsiders must be killed, so I'm afraid you'll have to die, then. My Master is a stickler for the rules sometimes, it seems."


"Die? In a war in Fuyuki? What do you mean?" Shirou asked, his mind racing even as the top of Lotus Blade sought the ground.


"Goodbye, kid," the man said. And with that, he disappeared-


"「斷空」 Split Sky," at that instant, Shirou's blade touched the ground.


-only to reappear alarmingly close to the redheaded mage. The man swung Gae Bolg 「刺し穿つ死棘の槍」 in a wide arc that would gore Shirou's torso, only for the ground surrounding the tip of Lotus Blade to shoot up as fast as a bullet. The combined mass and speed of the rising ground was enough to save Shirou from injury, but the blow was simply too much to be stopped without problems and a cloud of dust, filled with magic that dropped visibility to almost naught.


Shirou's spell, Split Sky, enchanted the ground around him to act as a magically reinforced fortress wall, raising so fast that it could cut incoming attacks in two and so strong and durable that for all but the most skilled mages in the Bureau it took a finishing move to pierce it. Combined with the way it automatically rose and sunk back to the ground at high speeds, independently reacting to danger and its own comparatively low mana cost, it was a very good defensive spell. It could buy the user time to prepare a finishing move, earning a place among the list of spells and skills called a 'Perfect Defense' in tournament circles despite forcing the caster to stay in one spot without moving. And Shirou had no hope of casting it without Lotus Blade.


Yet it had been swept aside in a single blow by the man before him.


That alone told him that the man was at the very least on the same level as the Wolkenritter, the Ace of Aces or his teacher. A glowing array materialized behind him, an animated two-dimensional Schlegel diagram of a tesseract, one filled with Mid Childan symbols running along its edges. It was a product of the cusp of Mid Childan magical knowledge, and it contained the framework for the equations involved in the magic spells Shirou used, as it ws developed directly for him. The boy's voice rang in the air, his own body hidden by the cloud of magically reinforced dust that was created with the destruction of the Split Sky protection.


"「Series Gladius」 Sagita Magica, Fire!"


It was the spell that counted as Shirou's trademark long ranged area denial and suppression fire spell. And it made it rain swords. They were fairly simple swords of various makes and shapes without any particular magical reinforcement, but they filled the air, flew at high speeds and were aimed at the man in blue. Undaunted, the man and his spear weaved and danced around, deflecting them all without getting scratched even once. As far as straightforward skill with weapons went, it was now clear that he was the best that Shirou had ever seen, beyond that of the members of the Wolkenritter.


Still, the blue-haired man was pinned for long enough, and Shirou took the opportunity to move up and back in the air. This time, a square appeared below his feet, parallel to the ground, while the tesseract's projection behind his back more than tripled in size and sped up its cycle. Shirou began casting 「斬監剣」 Execution Blade, a spell that would give him a giant weapon he would then swing with Transport Magic to great effect.


But the Irish spear, Gae Bolg, pierced his heart.


Magical energy crackled on his skin as the remains of a broken protection spell shattered, and Shirou's expression froze in place with his eyes focused on what was right in front of them. The face of the red eyed man was full of a savage complacency, like a wolf dealing the final blow to its current prey. Shirou's corpse fell from the air gracelessly, sliding off Gae Bolg without much fanfare. Lotus Blade was nowhere to be seen, having vanished from sight when the barrier jacket had seemingly broken.


"A pity. He'd have been more fun if he'd allowed to live," the man in blue commented without looking very sorry.


The girl in red glared at the spearman, her eyes full of a cold rage that the rest of her face did not show. "You-"


Without needing a word, the tanned man stepped forth, moving to stand between the girl in red and the man in blue. Unlike the girl's cold rage, it could be said that his eyes were at worst, disappointed, yet mostly uncaring and cold. Kanshou and Bakuya fell into their respective places in the stance he favored as his muscles tensed for battle.


"Archer, kill Lancer," the girl in red ordered. Somewhere between 'you' and 'Archer' she had regained control of herself, at least outwardly. Archer's stance subtly changed from defense to offensive.


"So you were finally going to take me seriously?" The blue spearman complained with a snort, "Just my luck. My master's not very courageous, so I'm afraid that we'll have to fight some other day." Turning around, Lancer dismissed Gae Bolg and ran out of the school building. After jumping over the outer wall, he disappeared from their sight.


"Rin, should I chase after him?" Archer asked without leaving his spot.


Shaking her head, Rin answered, "no, you stay here Archer. Stand guard while I heal this idiot." She walked over to the fallen body.


"You can raise the dead now? It seems like my Master is just full of interesting surprises," Archer commented.


"He's not dead. Someone who could use all those mysteries... if I can heal him, then S-" Rin stopped herself before saying more.


Archer was not about to leave it at that, "is it wise to heal a magus who didn't register with the Second Owner, though? I noticed that you were surprised by him showing up through that spell."


"He didn't have to register. A magus only has to register with me if he wants permission for setting up a workshop within my territory, but someone who can traverse long distances fast enough can simply set up his workshop outside my territory and commute. And since he can use use that...that- whatever he did to show up right there, then his workshop is probably on a mountain cave somewhere. I'm just being nice, since I think Mitsuzuri likes him." Rin spoke without looking up at Archer's face, choosing to shift the corpse that was laid awkwardly on the ground.


Taking out a red pendant from a pocket, she sat in seiza besides the corpse with the pendant hanging a couple centimeters above the hole in the torso, and began to gather the magical energy stored in the pendant's gem to use it in what would essentially be a <<Revive>> spell. At that moment, a hand grabbed her in place, disrupting the spell as Rin was startled. The same female voice with metallic, or digital, undertones rang out from somewhere near the corpse.


"「空蝉」 Man of this World, 「Unload」."


"What?" Rin may have been still young and inexperienced, but she still had the presence of mind to spring away from the corpse. Archer immediately took a position where he could protect most of Rin's body with his own, while allowing her space to see what was going on. They both moved further back from the "corpse".


"Be careful," Archer said. "We don't know what we are dealing with, here."


But what they were dealing with was right in front of their eyes. As they watched, the whole corpse glowed a silvery white with the glow leaving the body in the shape of sparks not unlike those that left bonfires and other medium sized fires. Every time that a spark left the body, the glow in that part stopped, returning to its original not-glowing condition everywhere. With a single exception.


The wounds in the corpse, like the bruises, scrapes and the one broken bone -a humerus- from the fall, plus the hole in the torso where the heart should be, all of them disappeared. In addition, the replaced body was not frozen in death, so his chest rose and fell in time with his breath, and his eyes soon blinked open like they were blinking the glare away.


Shirou soon stood up from the ground, finding himself a few paces away from the other two people in the school, who were looking at him with a stony face and an angry expression respectively. He opened his mouth to speak, but the girl, another student in his year in Homurabara, interrupted him before he could start.


"Emiya-kun! It's so nice to see that you're okay. I'll see you on Monday at the school's roof during lunch hour, okay?" She said, her voice sweet like honey, almost making Shirou forget what he'd earlier. But Tohsaka wasn't happy despite how she sounded. She was as angry as Shirou had initially thought she was. "Or I'll kill you."


"Wha- I mean, yes?" Shirou, who had discovered the TSAB at same age that Harry Potter received his Hogwarts letter, was frankly unnerved by the girl.


"Excellent! Then I'll be see you the day after tomorrow, Emiya-kun. Good night!" Tohsaka said, still with the same exceedingly sweet tone. Shirou's gaze strayed for a moment to the other man, who was glaring coldly at him. Shirou's expression hardened at the sight of the other man.


"Uhm..." Shirou was confused. He could understand Tohsaka not being as happy as he would be in the opposite situation, not everyone enjoyed helping other people like he did. But, Tohsaka being angry at him for not being dead? After she was going to try to save him? He simply couldn't wrap his mind around the idea.


"Boy," the man, Archer, if Shirou's somewhat flawed perception of the world around him while using Man of this World was right.


"Yes?" Shirou couldn't get a grasp on the man. Usually, if someone use a weapon, Shirou could sympathize with it enough to get a rough idea of the person's history with it. Spontaneous Sympathetic-Concept Resonance Mediated Psychometry that ended up functioning like a Focus-Enabled Magical Empathy. Technical terms that had been pushed into his head to the point that he could almost recite their definition from memory despite his incomplete understanding of them.


The problem with the Kanshou and Bakuya that Archer wielded was that they were...empty weapons. They had been forged married blades, and one would always return to the other, and the man had called them into his hands to fight Lancer just a few minutes ago, as the owner of those paired blades, but...nothing more. To be more accurate, nothing in between. It was like they had literally come to exist when Archer had needed them, with the weight of the accumulated years, but none of the history that there should have been there. And added to the unfounded mutual animosity they had going form the moment they'd crossed eyes...


Shirou couldn't get a grasp on Archer, and yet, despised him.


"What is best in life?" Tohsaka, who had been walking away, paused at the unexpected question from the man.


Shirou'd never heard the quote, or anything about it, since his access to Earth's entertainment culture was limited to what his circle of friends and family maneuvered into watching, especially Hayate-san. As a consequence, it was mostly Western blockbuster movies, anime, super heroes and anime and manga form Japan, mixed with video games from all over the world. But no Conan the Barbarian. Yet, without even a short pause to think, he answered.


"To save the innocent." There was no doubt in his mind. It was who he was. And perhaps he had been steered in a certain direction by his friends and family.


Archer snorted. Shirou's fingers tightened fractionally.


"So you're still a fool," he commented dryly, as if to himself. But loud enough for Shirou to hear, which made the teen's temper rise even more.


It was also loud enough for Tohsaka to hear, since the girl immediately spoke without looking back. "Enough, Archer! We're leaving."


Shirou just watched them walk away, and when they vanished from his sight, he simply kept staring at the last place he'd managed to see them. Intellectually, he'd known that there were other magi in Fuyuki, and that more than half of those of them that were of his age went to Homurabara. But to find out that the school idol, Tohsaka Rin, was one of the cold-hearted researchers that made up most of the Earth's magus population was kinda overwhelming.


It didn't help that Shirou had something of a crush on her, so he was currently ready to believe that Ayako was actually a Magical Girl. Or that Taiga was secretly a Sith. Or that mankind was trapped inside the Matrix and instead of magi, there were just hackers. Well, not exactly ready to believe. He'd still be surprised, while knowing from beforehand that he'd be surprised. Thankfully for his peace of mind, Lotus Blade chimed in.


"「Incoming Dimensional Transport Detected」."


"ETA?" Shirou asked.


But even as he spoke, the flash of light that heralded commercial Dimensional Transfers filled the schoolyard. When it vanished, Vivio was standing there, wearing the leather jacket that Fate had given her as a gift for her last birthday. And the skirt from Shamal, the sweater from Yuuno and the boots from Vita. Shirou wondered for a moment if she was also wearing the lingerie set that she'd got from Hayate, before vanishing those thoughts from his mind. Shirou felt lucky that the cold air of the winter and the tan he'd gotten in Ramaqen hid his blush.


"Vivio!"


With a smile, Shirou walked with his arms open towards the girl, who'd shown up a couple meters away from him. The hetero-chromatic blonde smiled black widely, and jumped forwards to hug him.


"Shirou!"


They hugged, and remained holding each other for some time, before finally letting go.


"Let's go, Vivio." Never one to push his problems on other people, he was going to hold telling Vivio what had just happened until later, when they'd already arrived to his house.


"We're going to walk, Shirou?" Vivio asked.


"Oh, right. Sorry," Shirou answered rubbing the back of his head. He'd forgotten that they'd discussed the option of using Shirou's, or rather Lotus Blade's, Transport Magic to get home quickly to get their Japanese money and eat some food or order out. "「柔散歩」 Gentle Stroll, 「Load」."


The square of Summoning Magic appeared below their feet, and suddenly they were gone from the school without even a flash of light to attest for their departure.

"Shirou...how exactly did you damage your clothes so much in just one minute?"​

TO BE CONTINUED...IN CHAPTER 2




There. Rin's characterization may be a little weak, but I think I pulled through, somehow. Explanations on how do Magecraft and Mana-linking, Magic Circuits and Linker Cores and Mystic Codes and Devices work and/or interact will come in the next chapters. Questions? Comments?

Also, this is the 3rd forum this' been posted in. There's more yet to come...

 

[Nasuren]

I read this on BL not TOO long ago. It's not bad and has potential, but I'll hold off on a verdict until more is posted.

 

[lethum]

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou​

Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field​

It was a dark and stormy night around Narita, Tokyo's international airport. Therefore, it was closed. Rain fell in droves to the ground, and many of the travelers whose flights had been delayed or cancelled awaited in the airport for news on the airline's response to the eventuality. Kiritsugu's mind was elsewhere. People like him could read a crowd like a surfer reads sea waves. Thus, he was making his way through the airport's floor 2F, towards a the end of the North Wing, close to one of the elevator stops.

Once he closed in however, he felt a bounded field go up, and people disappear. In fact, with his body ravaged by the curse of the Grail, he was surprised at how accurately he felt what happened. Yet, he was at a lost as to how to articulate what it was that he'd sensed. Like somebody who's only just conceived the idea of tools watching a Rube Goldberg machine in action.

After shaking off the effects of that situation much slower than he should have, he noted that, in addition to everyone inside Narita disappearing, there was an isotropic purple shade everywhere but on him and he was alone. But the disturbance he was expecting when he began to follow the intricacies of the crowds...wasn't. Instead, there was a large hole in the wall, spying within its confines the purple tinted exterior of the airport.

Something roared, and Kiritsugu felt the impact of the noise hit his eardrums like a bullet. Drawing a gun from his coat and switching off the safety, he took a pained approximation of a shooting stance and walked closer to the hole in the wall. From half remembered plans for the airport he'd used once, and the actual shape of the hole, he could rule it as an outward impact structural damage to the wall caused by something with the proportions of a one year old kid but the size, mass and speed of a family car.

The lack of stress marks on the ground meant that either the impact was the result of magecraft, or it was caused by something with supernatural locomotion means. After gripping his gun for a moment, he reset the safety and stored it back into his coat and took out another weapon. It felt too heavy for his arms, but it was necessary at the moment, so the fact went ignored. Again, the Thompson Contender rode to battle on a Magus Killer steed.

Walking mostly sideways until the hole was right in front of him, he then began approaching it, quickly noticing a soft green glow coming from a point above him, hidden by the wall above the hole. He walked closer, and saw a pair of clawed feet, a mix between a horses' hooves and a biped dinosaur's feet, tied together by a glowing green chain.

Relaxing fractionally, Kiritsugu finally closed in to a couple meters from the wall. He could see a long haired blond man in a green suit and glasses, floating -standing- in the air as he imperiously stared down a 5 meter tall fur covered creature immobilized by green glowing chains on all of its limbs, joints and torso, without leaving even the snout free to move. Reluctantly, Kiritsugu lowered his gun until it was pointed at the ground.

The blond man turned his stare to Kiritusgu, and lowered in the air. His expression had immediately changed from the serious demeanor from before into something like Irsviel's own at his classes about the real world, openly trusting.

"Oh, forgive me, I didn't know there was another magic user around here. This person attempted to turn herself into a gnoll lycantrope and tried to kill me, but something went wrong and she died before I could do anything," he said, looking actually contrite about the fact, perhaps she was a valuable test subject? "I tried to apply basic resuscitation procedures, but the she only lasted long enough to roar a single time and, well, die again."

Kiritsugu nodded at the other man, lowering his gun completely as a sign of trust. Despite the unusual mysteries in action, it was not an altogether uncommon occurrence in the world of magi, probably beginning in the actual airport before the man had activated a bounded field to maintain the secrecy of magecraft. Flight mysteries were uncommon, but spells were already uncommon things, and the presence of foreign magi in Japan was usually related to private or secret research, so something like a reasonably fast levitation to control the flow of battle against an over-sized monster was certainly not common even for magi, but not inconceivable.

The situation was under control, then.

"Oh, forgive me," the other man continued. "It was a bit rude of me not to introduce myself. I am Yuuno Scrya, from the Infinite Library."





Shirou and Vivio were, at the moment, standing outside the shed in the grounds of the Emiya household. Shirou's teacher had converted it into a backup kitchen and dining room. Another floor had been added, and the floor of the original one had been lowered over half a meter to prevent it from ending up too cramped. A magic circle that had been initially inscribed on the stone ground became a solid novelty dining table, and wards had been added to turn the second floor into a place where Shirou could practice his magic without fear of being discovered, or needing Lotus Blade to cast a barrier, which could easily be detected and infiltrated by a mage from the Bureau.

Shirou had been in a daze, after meeting Vivio again, but he was able to remember that he'd inform Vivio of what happened. When the girl moved to enter the place, Shirou stopped.

"Vivio, wait."

She turned in place, cocking her hip to the side and resting one arm on it. She was still smiling, and her eyes lifted slightly to stare into his. "Shirou?" She asked, with her voice and face tinged with curiosity.

"I've got something to tell you. Something important." Shirou said, making sure that his expression reflected the gravity of the issue. Oddly enough, this made Vivio's expression freeze and her hands to press against the middle of her chest, above her bust.

"Shirou I-" Vivio began saying, before stopping again.

"Let me go first. Vivio, I..." Shirou hesitated for a moment, staring at the intensity in Vivio's expression. No matter how he worded it, he was sure that Vivio would understand, but he wasn't sure which words to use. Nothing felt quite right, and it had been the first time that Shirou had been taken out with such ease in years. "-I was attacked."

Vivio's expression unfroze, filling with surprise before worry sunk in. "Shirou! What happened, are you okay?"

She suddenly stopped talking, and gave Shirou a look from head to toe.

"Shirou...how exactly did you damage your clothes so much in just one minute?" She asked the other boy.

"It wasn't my fault! I..." Shirou answered. "I was attacked as soon as I arrived up. Almost. I think."

"Shirou, either you got attacked, or you weren't. Are you trying to hide something from me?" Vivio accused. "Again?"

Shirou backpedaled a bit. "No, no! I'm not. I believe that I showed up in the middle of their fight, and they have a rule against outsiders knowing about them," Shirou explained. "After I managed to block the first blow, it was pretty obvious that I didn't stand a chance, so I used 「Man of this World」 to get them off my back."

Vivio nodded at Shirou's explanation while looking increasingly pensive. "And they all attacked you at the same time? Did you recognize anyone?"

"Well, there were three of them," Shirou said. "Only one of them attacked me, the other two didn't do anything until that one left, and they were going to heal me before I dismissed my Fake Corpse Spell. And..." Shirou trailed off.

Vivio looked at him expectantly.

"One of them...she was Tohsaka Rin," Shirou revealed.

"What!" Vivio exclaimed. Tohsaka Rin was a school idol who made perfect grades and was perfectly nice, polite and distant to everyone. She was in another class, but she was popular among the students, and even more among the girls. Mostly because it was girls who she mainly interacted with, but with her beauty she'd have to actively work to be unpopular with the boys.

"She was the one who was going to heal me with a pendant," Shirou continued.

"A support device?" Vivio asked. "Like Klarwind?"

"Or a healing type mystic code, or even some sort of magecraft cartridge," Shirou countered.

Vivio frowned, "not to be dismissive, but magic users from Earth stronger than the Wolkenritter? Didn't Yuuno-sensei say that they died out?"

Shirou shook his head. "Lotus Blade didn't get a good reading on them, but it managed to discard Algorithmic Linking pretty soon. And the magi from Earth can do crazy things with their magecraft, what if this time someone , or some group managed to make someone crazy strong?"

"But they wouldn't, unless it took them closer to the swirl," Vivio answered, refuting what Shirou had said.

"Well, the people from Earth don't have much need of a magical super soldier program while the Belkans and their enemies did," Shirou conceded. "I just don't think that we'll find yet another Lost Logia on Earth, making trouble of this size, after this much time. Earth is just too far away from Bureau, Belkan and Alhazard space proper to have too many Lost Logia."

Shirou heard bells in his head. He knew what that meant, the first bounded field that his father had installed, the one that simply detected hostile intent, had been triggered.

"-Vivio! Intruders!-" he exclaimed over a telepathic link.

"-The alarm? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?-" the blonde girl asked. Sacred Heart, who'd been inside a tiny backpack hanging from Vivio's shoulders immediately bypassed the material of the container to join its Master.

"-That it's the same person who attacked me here to finish the job? Maybe-" Shirou answered.

Without further words, Shirou jumped through a second floor window in the shed, with Lotus Blade already in its sword form and shattering the glass before he went through. Vivio herself ran into the house as fast as she could without leaving tracks in the ground, following one of the hallways to one of the rooms with a view to the shed.

From then on, there would be minimal telepathic communication, as had become general doctrine after the latest improvements in interception technology. The unspoken plan was simply to split up and take flanking positions, knowing that the magical energy given off by their Algorithmic Linking was almost undetectable to common magecraft.

Turning around one of the corners of Shirou's house, Lancer entered the courtyard and saw the last piece of broken glass hit the ground.

"There you are!"

In a single leap, Lancer crossed the yard and ended just below the broken window. Grabbing his spear almost like a sword, he swung it down in a horizontal arc that destroyed the wall, made a cloud of dust and caused an explosion of magical power that pushed him back to fall down in the middle of the small courtyard. Shifting his grip again for a more versatile one, Lancer stared at the damage he had caused with a smirk.

Inside, Shirou had been trying to reach a cabinet in the corner of the room, when Lancer's strike had broken not only the wall near the window, but fractured most of the the ground of the second floor, even the place where Shirou was running. Coordinating with Lotus Blade to compensate for the debris and land safely, Shirou twisted in midair and fell on something hard. Having been standing above it, Shirou had reached the floor after the debris had fallen, so he didn't bother looking up.

Even with all the damage there wasn't much dust, so Shirou was soon able to see that most of the wall of the shed had been destroyed, and the fallen wall had allowed damaged sections of the second floor to fall. By the feel of his stance, and his relative distances to everything around him, he knew that he had fallen on top of the table.

Outside the shed, the blue clad warrior was staring straight at him, a savage smirk on his face. The red lance was there, already in guard position. "I see that you're still alive, kid." His expression grew fiercer, until it his smirk was more of a display of teeth than any indication of his mood. "How about another round?"

Shirou instinctually raised his blade to block the blow he was coming, but instead of the blow he was expecting, what he saw was at least a dozen magical projectiles bombarded both Lancer and the ground he was standing on. Recognizing Vivio's handiwork, Shirou gave Lotus Blade the order to change modes.

"「弓矢様」 Bow Mode"

At once, the Device in Shirou's hand changed shape. The blade seemed to sink into the hilt, while the hilt itself grew and curved backwards. In the middle of the bow, a horizontal slit opened and widened until the grip was in two distinct halves that against all common sense, remained in place as though they hadn't ceased being a single solid piece. Taut metallic strings grew from the ends of the bow and joined into a single one in the nocking point, while the insides of the handle of the blow began glowing a soft, deep purple. The bow was still looked like it was all made out of metal.

While the shape of Lotus Blade's Bow Mode was something of a formality, since the major propellant of the projectiles it fired was not the taut string, but a collection of enchantments that affected the space between both halves of the bow's grip. In fact, the bow shape was something of a physical and mental mnemonic to help Shirou use his own aim more comfortably, since his own aiming method was actually more accurate than the Bureau's own accuracy software.

Shirou knew all this, of course, so his attention was on Lancer, whose eyes tightened slightly every time that he destroyed one of Vivio's magical attacks with his Lance. From watching the reflected light on the walls and the ground, he could tell that the spell Vivio was using, a variation of her old Sonic Shooter Assault Shift, had an added flash-bang effect that both Lotus Blade and Sacred Heart automatically filtered for their own Masters.

And yet, Lancer was inconvenienced, at most. His guard never broke. Shirou's own aiming style was able to tell that anything that flew at Lancer would be blocked, dodged, parried or deflected. What was worse, Lancer's footwork was shifting almost imperceptibly, rotating. And if Shirou guessed right, that meant that Vivio was only a couple of seconds away from being directly attacked by the blue spear man.

Shirou wouldn't let that happen.

All sound fell from his ears, along with all irrelevant sensory data. -Ashibumi, the footing- even as his free hand -Dozukuri, the torso- went up to -Yugamae, the bow- the nocking point of -Uchiokoshi, bow rise- the string where -Uchiokoshi, bow rise- he began pulling it back and -Hikiwake, drawing apart- filling the bow with his magical power -Kai, the full draw- to the brim, compensating his technique for a non-Japanese bow and finally using his own magic to call forth a sword to serve his as his arrow a and finally -Hanare, the release- letting it be sped up to high velocities by Lotus Blade.

"「剣道投射砲」 Blade Motion Gun, fire!"

Empowered by Shirou's spell, and propelled by Lotus Blade and Shirou both, the sword -130 years old, super dense metallic alloy- flew true to its target, but something was wrong. Shirou's magic continued to leave him, and the magic circles of his personal Magic System were still active, with red glowing runes filling voids within. Too disciplined to let it distract him, the next instants passed agonizingly slow for Shirou, until the sword he fired -straight, double edged long sword- finally impacted Gae Bolg.

-Zanshin, the remaining body:spirit-

Like previous attacks, this one was ineffective, but a short radius around Lancer sunk in, the grass flattened and the ground sunk in like an enormous round boulder had fallen to the ground. Shirou wasn't actually forced immobile by his firing technique. It actually was the sudden drain on his power, which had even activated his magic circuits, what had rooted Shirou to his spot.

Thankfully, the draining event didn't last long and Shirou was able to jump back from where he had been standing, and away form Lancer, and stare at what was happening on top of the stone table.

It was a mistake.

Without prior warning, or the proper filtering protocols pre-installed, Lotus blade was unable to prevent Shirou from being momentarily blinded by the hurricane of magical energy that surrounded the stone structure. Powerful winds filled the shed, strong enough to turn dust and small pebbles into a localized sandstorm, even as a great pressure fell on everyone capable of feeling magical energy. Shirou was thus unable to see Lancer jumping through the hole in the wall towards him, only for something inside the tornado of magical power to send him flying right back.

The clanging weapons heralded the return of all sensation to Shirou, and the storm of magical power and swirling wind in the shed died out in an flash of light and wind. Through his Barrier Jacket, a minor healing spell was applied on his eyes by Lotus Blade, so his eyesight was restored to perfect condition in the blink of an eye.

He saw her.

Her eyes were green, her hair light blond and straight, gathered in a bun behind her and her skin was healthy. A blue battledress with golden linings covered a white under-dress, and was covered in turn by pieces on plate armor on her chest, forearms, legs and on the outside of her legs, besides armored metal gauntles and boots. The lights inside the workshop weren't on, so the only source of light that bathed her form was the moonlight that entered through the huge hole in the wall, taking her image and turning it into an unearthly beauty that hardly seemed real, never mind possible.

When she spoke, her voice was as devoid of emotion as her eyes. "I ask of you. Are you my Master?"

Shirou, who'd still been holding Lotus Blade in ready position, let go of his bow's string and brought it closer to himself, so that it was aimed to the side. He felt something wet roll down from the back of his hand. Simultaneously, both Shirou and the mysterious knight looked at Shirou's left hand, finding a red mark confined within a diamond shape, stylized and split into three different marks that made up the greater one. Starting from there was a red trail, left by a single drop of blood when it rolled down from the mark.

Saber nodded, then, and with the same stoic grace she had spoken earlier, she said, "I, Servant Saber, have come forth to answer your summons. Henceforth, my sword shall be with you and your fate shall be with me. With this oath, our contract is complete."

Shirou believed her. He'd been struck in awe at her appearance, but whatever magical event had happened when he brought forth a sword with his magic, had still happened and had then evolved into something more stable. Instead of the powerful vortex that ate up his power at the beginning, there was a much smaller and steadier stream now, like a water clock compared to the initial broken dam.

Of course, her magic was so implacable that even though it was his power that was going towards her, there was a small feedback of a power that made Shirou feel rested and healed. Suddenly, Saber turned in place and jumped out of the shed in a single leap, while Shirou dropped to the ground, walked around the table and exited the shed over the doors, which had fallen when the wall was broken.

"-Shirou! Are you okay? Where did she come from?-" Came Vivio's telepathic question.

"-It's okay, I'm okay. I think I summoned her.-" Shirou answered.

"-You think?-" Vivio asked, incredulous. She was probably still in one of the rooms of the house that overlooked the shed, hidden.

The only thing Shirou said was a "-Wow-"

He was watching Saber and Lancer fight. The lance user attacks saber without a word, but she simply countered his weapon with something invisible that she held in her hands. In less than a five blows, Lancer's blows grow stronger than anything he had used on Shirou, yet Saber deflects his every blow and forces him to give ground.

For normal people, ten straight blows in a single exchange between skilled combatants didn't happen, with the loser having died by then or by one of the combatants breaking away for a short breather. Even in battles between mages where the blows were enhanced with magic, around eight blows was the limit before the combatants attempted something else, and that was in battles where neither mage could take to the air. In the air, exchanges tended to include even less blows. Even if there were several exchanges in a row, they were separated by short interludes where the mages would split before charging back in...or allowing the other mage to do so.

For the two combatants in Shirou's lawn, they had quickly surpassed half a hundred high speed blows, with the ground around them being scarred by their weapons every time they passed close. They were both pouring magical power in their blows, as far as Shirou could tell. Or perhaps their blows were so powerful that the magical weapons began glowing with their inner power. A magical force so great that it becomes visible to the eye.

Some time while they were fighting, the clouds covered the moon again, but the two warriors had continued without pause. "You coward, hiding your weapon like that!" Lancer calls out, but Saber simply keeps attacking. Shirou can tell that with Saber using an invisible weapon, Lancer can't attack without potentially giving the other girl an huge opening. For somebody with the kind of skill that let him fight an invisible weapon by watching the enemy's body language, doing that was simply too careless.

Then finally, the exchange reached its end. Saber attempted to deal a final, decisive blow to Lancer while he was on the defensive, but he avoided her attack by practically teleporting back, before returning just as fast to deal a blow that Saber only barely defended. Still, the last collision was so strong that the clashing magical energy tried to blow them apart. Saber, whose feet where firmly planted on the ground, remained in place, while Lancer was thrown several meters away one more time.

Lancer's smile was gone. Though Saber's stoic expression has barely shifted in the time Shirou'd known her, all 30 seconds of it, she was clearly dissatisfied. And it was only natural. If Saber's blow had left an opening after it had struck, it was because she expected it to be the last. And if Lancer was thrown through the air once more, it was because only his own blow had also been supposed to be the final one.

"Before we go on, let me ask you first. Your Noble Phantasm, is it a sword?" Lancer asks. Shirou can feel the spike in hostile intent that accompanies the question, stabbing into Saber like it was a knife.

But Saber was unmoved by it. Instead, she taunted the lance user, "who knows? It might be a battle axe or it might be a spear. It might even be a bow, Lancer."

Saber's taunt was not ineffective and Lancer felt even more murderous than before, but against all expectations he lowers his lance, as if he has decided to stop fighting. Saber watched the man warily. Like a suspected deja-vu, Lancer's stance was painfully familiar to Shirou. Despite having never seen it before, he almost recognized it as easily as he did his own arm. Suddenly, the tip of Lancer's spear began gathering magical power, and the air was filled with a murderous intent much higher than before.

Suddenly, Shirou recognized it.

Lancer spoke, "You, I'll cut that heart of yours!" Gae Bolg was not only a sturdy spear. It was a supernatural existence of legend tied to the Hound of Ireland. It was only thanks to his remote psychometry on swords that it happened, but he knew that the next blow would simply ignore Saber's attempts at defense, because the result she was aiming to prevent would be the first thing to happen.

It would take too long to explain. He had a straight blade in his right hand and Lotus Blade in his left one, he drew the string back and the sword was the arrow was the target was Emiya Shirou was shoddily reinforced and sent flying at Lancer, aimed right below his solar plexus.

It was deflected harmlessly, broken to pieces and redirected away from Lancer. But the attack had been successful. For an opponent like Lancer, there was no chance of killing him that easily. But Lancer had needed to use Gae Bolg to deflect his attack, and the Noble Phantasm had not been used, letting the gathered magical power disperse in the air. Not that Shirou knew what a Noble Phantasm was exactly, or at all, but the term was as natural to describe Gae Bolg as it was for the sea to be full of water.

Oddly enough, Lancer's smirk returned, though it had an odd quality that reminded Shirou of bittersweet smiles, filled with numerous apparently contradicting signs. The lance user was disappointed, excited, angry and relaxed. There was no killing intent of note remaining anymore, and even the invisible pressure of the gathered magical power had vanished.

"Looks like you really lucked out with your Master, Saber," Lancer said conversationally, like he hadn't just been trying to kill her. "Yours looks like a fun one, but mine is a coward. He's telling me to go back to keep my lance in reserve."

"You are running away, Lancer?" Saber challenges the blue haired man.

Lancer snorted before answering. "Yeah, yeah. Just be prepared to die if you do come after me, Saber." With that, Lancer casually hops over the wall and vanishes from the Emiya state. Saber looked like she was going to chase him over the wall, but suddenly she stopped and twisted her head to look at Shirou's house. Shirou only saw this over the corner of his eye though, since he was already looking at what called her attention.

In fact, Shirou had been about to call out for her to stop, but since she did it without his prompting, he returned his focus to his blonde ally. Who was also his blonde friend. "Vivio! Are you okay?"

"I'm okay Shirou. But tell me first, why did you stop answering?" Vivio asked Shirou, walking over to meet the redhead in the middle of the lawn turned battlefield.

Shirou answered. "Sorry, I got distracted by the battle."

"Master," came Saber's voice, making both of them stare at the knight. "She is an ally?" Her question was punctuated by her raised invisible weapon. A Saber, if her title was anything to go by. Or at least some kind of sword.

Vivio gave Shirou a look, one that told him that he should deal with this situation before something went wrong.

"Yes, she is...Saber. How did you show up?" Shirou asked the other girl. Hayate's had given Shirou and Vivio a 'what to do if someone suddenly shows up saying you're their master' lesson, at Yuuno's behest. Shirou had never thought that they'd amount to more than an amusing childhood anecdote.

"But you summoned me, did you not? Were you expecting to summon another Heroic Spirit? Was the contract not enough of an assurance, Master?" Saber asked.

"I'm a summoner," Shirou answered. "I was summoning... something else, but you showed up instead. You gave us quite the surprise, even if you were on our side from the moment you appeared. I mean, the only reason I know that the man in blue was Lancer is because I heard someone else called him that."

Saber expression did not change. "I see...so you're not a formal Master, correct?" The girl nodded to herself after Shirou assented with his head. "You do not need to concern yourself, Master, I won't betray our pact."

"You keep mentioning that, a pact, a contract. What do you mean by that? My magic can only call swords, and my teacher said that the circle in the shed was like a clean room, but for magic instead of surgery."

The knight's head swivels again to a seemingly random direction, right when it seemed like she was going to answer. "Master, enemies approach."

Shirou turned to Vivio, who said "alright, I'll check" and called up a floating screen. The angle didn't make it easy, but Shirou recognized the control panel for the defenses of the house, most of which read as inactive or dormant. A few touch, thought and text commands by Vivio later and a barrier was deployed inside the walls of Shirou's house, tinting the world in purple.

Another screen appeared besides the first one, and Shirou was able to see an aerial view of the house with a HUD overlay that highlighted several shapes in the screen. Shirou glanced at Saber, who was staring at Vivio with an unreadable expression, but thankfully no hostility. She had recognized that the other blonde was on their side, and knew better than to distract her.

"It's Tohsaka-san and another man, Shirou." Vivio said, lifting her face to look at Shirou again. "I think the man knows that something happened. He reacted when the barrier went up."

"Not a man," Saber said, making both Shirou and Vivio turn to look at her. "A Servant."

"But what is a Servant?" Vivio asked the knight, as she dismissed both screens.

However, she was ignored by Saber, who turned to ask Shirou. "Master, dealing with these two enemies shouldn't take more than a few seconds. We should strike first, before they have the chance to mount their own attack."

"No!" Shirou exclaimed. "They were the ones that were going to heal me when they thought that Lancer had injured me. At least they deserve to be hear what they've got to say, instead of fighting from the start."

Saber seemed to struggle with that order for an instant, before giving her assent and moving to stand guard near Shirou, "as you say, Master."

"Also," Shirou began, "if the man is tanned, with white hair and dressed in black with a red coat, the he was called Archer, though I think he used two Chinese blades."

After Saber nodded in response, a terse moment passes as the three of them wait for the newcomers to arrive. Saber addresses Vivio, "My Lady, if you'd stand behind me I can protect the two of you at the same time." Vivio looked like she wanted to protest, but finally walked over to stand near Shirou without a word. Another moment passed, but this time nobody interrupted the silence as they waited.

However, instead of jumping over the wall like Lancer had done, they heard the doorbell ring. Shirou and Vivio exchanged glances, before Shirou gave the girl a determined glance and walked around the house to the door with a careful but deliberate gait. Saber kept her position by him somewhat awkwardly, and Vivio walked behind them both. As they got closer to the door, Shirou felt the mark on his left hand react, making him wonder how Saber and Archer were related, and what a Servant was, exactly.

When they arrived at the door, they were in time to hear bell being rung again, as though the people outside were in no hurry to force their way inside. When Shirou opened the gate, Saber was by his side, perfectly visible from the outside even before Shirou was, while Vivio was somewhere on his other side where the door kept her somewhat hidden even after Shirou opened the gate.

As they expected, it was Tohsaka behind the door, with Archer standing behind her with crossed arms and a somewhat belligerent expression. She was smiling politely, as though they had met by chance on the corridors of the school.

"Good evening, Emiya-kun!" She chirped.

Going with the flow, Shirou decided to treat her normally, too. "Good evening, Tohsaka. I wasn't expecting to meet you before this Monday."

"Oh, it's alright Emiya-kun. I just noticed that Lancer came this way and left before we arrived," Tohsaka answered, as if unconcerned with Saber's presence. "Do you mind if I come in?"

"Oh, of course not. We just arrived ourselves, so it's no problem," Shirou answered and stood a bit to the side. Saber did the same, creating a passage between the two for Tohsaka and Archer to pass through. Before they went through though, Shirou jogged over to the door, opened it and began turning lights on. Tohsaka made no mention of the purple tint that filled everything inside the barrier, and neither did Archer.

Shirou wasn't surprised. For people with magic, barriers were visible from outside as long as you had a line of sight to it, and the one on the house was about four stories tall. And bounded fields that were unnoticeable to normal people were standard for magi. In a traditional neighborhood like Shirou's, something that tall could be easily seen from quite a distance. Not to mention that Archer had apparently noticed when it went up, without looking.

After opening the door to his house and turning the lights on, he turned over to the others, and saw Tohsaka give Vivio a double take after she surreptitiously glanced around the house. When Vivio simply smiled at her, her own smile brightened, so Shirou simply called them over to come inside.

Without much fanfare, they settled into Shirou's house. Of course, he could tell that Vivio's presence had unsettled Tohsaka for some reason, although she still started the conversation. "This house is quite big, Emiya-kun. Has it been in your family for long?"

"Actually, I think my father bought it a couple of years ago. And he didn't move in until he adopted me." Shirou answered, slightly unnerved.

"And I moved here for High School," Vivio added. "Since my mother was originally from Japan, and I wanted to finish my basic schooling here in Fuyuki with Shirou."

"So you're a relative of Emiya-kun?" Tohsaka asked Vivio. Somehow, the atmosphere felt stifling to Shirou, despite the amicability of the small talk.

"Oh, no. We just became really good friends since we have the same teacher," Vivio corrected the other girl. "My mother just trusts Shirou enough to let us live together, even if she can't return to Japan because of her work."

"I see," Tohsaka answered. "My house has been in my family for generations, but since it is a Western-style manor a Japanese-style house like this is pretty unusual for me."

"It is the only house I've ever really lived in, really, so I don't know about how that feels. When I'm not here I mostly stay at hotels and they are completely different," Shirou said.

Tohsaka nodded at that. "You must like your house a lot, then. It is pretty big, and it looks well looked after."

"Thank you. We actually just came back from a vacation, so everything is is a little unkempt." Shirou said.

"I hope that Lancer didn't damage your house too much," Tohsaka mentioned so casually that Shirou almost missed it. The atmosphere, which had been getting lighter with every second spent on small talk, suddenly turned tense. Shirou saw Vivio straighten up in her seat, and how Archer and Saber, who'd stayed silent and standing until then, tensed up.

"The shed on my yard lost a wall and most of the ground of the second floor, and there are some craters and slashes in ground nearby, but nothing to the house proper, thankfully." Shirou answered. On his father's behalf, Shirou's teacher had coached him on the half truths and misdirections of keeping magic a secret. Since both the Bureau and the Magic Association had their own reasons for keeping knowledge of magic away from the general populace of Earth, it was a must have if he was to live there and learn from him.

"Is that so?" Tohsaka asked, raising an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have believed that a Caster could drive a Lancer away, even if they'd set their territory here."

Shirou heard more than saw Saber shift minutely while Vivio kept sitting straight and Archer's eyes narrowed.

"I don't know any Casters," Shirou answered honestly.

"Oh? And how do you explain what happened at the school, then?" Tohsaka asked somewhat heatedly. Given her beauty and usual grace at school, her anger made her look quite scary to Shirou.

"That was something that my teacher set up. I just used it because I saw that Lancer was too good for me to beat. Or escape," Shirou said.

"Your teacher who is also hers?" Tohsaka demanded, gesturing at Vivio with a hand.

"Yes?" Shirou answered again, unsure why Tohsaka was making such a big deal out of it.

At that moment, Tohsaka also seemed to decide that she was getting pointlessly angry, and relaxed visibly.

"I was going to ask you on Monday to make sure, but now that you're here...you don't have a workshop here, do you?" Tohsaka asked. She had her own suspicions, but it would be unwise to simply leave the situation up in the air without confirming anything first.

"No, I don't." Shirou answered. "But Tohsaka, you didn't come here just to ask that, did you?"

"Of course not!" Tohsaka said, her voice somewhat raised. "Servants are dangerous! Since Lancer left so fast, then you either had managed to drive him away, somehow, or you'd been killed. I know that-" she stopped herself from talking and began saying somethin that was most likely unrelated. "Magecraft has to be kept a secret, so if you'd been killed by a Servant, I had to make sure that there were no clues about magic for the police to find laying around."

That made sense to Shirou. An action like that was well within the rights and duties of the Second Owner of Fuyuki, and she may have had been tracking Lancer after he left the school. Archer had been fighting against the spearman at school, so they may have wanted to finish the fight before the sun rose and followed the Servant to his house.

"I understand," Shirou said. "But I have a question. About Masters and Servants, you know what's going on, right? Can you explain it to me?"

"You already summoned a Servant of your own but you still want me to explain everything to you?" Tohsaka asked. From her tone it was clear that Shirou had annoyed her with that question.

"Actually," Vivio interjected, "we just got to Fuyuki a couple minutes ago. And we've never heard about any Masters or Servants before tonight," she finished saying. And blushed for some reason, Shirou noted. He wondered what she had thought of that had been so embarrassing.

Shirou nodded. "I didn't even know about Servants until tonight. And all I know about Masters is that I am one, and that Lancer had one that ordered him to retreat."

"And you still summoned Saber," Tohsaka noted in a flat tone. She harrumphed before continuing, "I don't know if you're really good or just lucky."

"Mind your manners," Saber warned her. "You are a guest in this house only because my Master asked me to spare your lives while you approached," she said, making Tohsaka's expression flinch, and causing Archer to tense up again.

Giving Saber a probing look, Tohsaka turned back to Shirou. "If that's how things are, then I guess it's just fair that I explain in exchange for you saving my life from your Servant." Tohsaka said, like Saber hadn't just threatened her life. "To start, you have been chosen as a Master, and your proof are the three Command Seals engraved in your hand. It is the sign of a Master." Shirou looked at the symbols in the back of his hand.

"Each Command Seal is an absolute command that your Servant must obey, even things that break the laws of nature like bypassing the intermediate space to call her to your side in an instant. While you have them, they can be used to control an unruly Servant, or to give them a boost at a critical point in battle, so they are very useful. However, if you use more than two, you'll be killed." Tohsaka explained.

"Killed?" Shirou asked. It was a supremely odd thing to put on something like the Command Seals that Tohsaka had been describing.

"That's right," Tohsaka said. "In the Holy Grail War, Masters killing Masters is almost as common as Servants killing other Servants. Since the prize needs a Master to use, if there is only one Master left, then he or she is the winner. It is a death duel between seven Masters, called the Holy Grail War. Each Master summons a Servant, and the prize doesn't exist until six Servants have fallen."

She continued, "I don't know all the specifics, of course, but every few decades seven Masters are chosen and given Servants as familiars by the Holy Grail to combat other Masters."

"Wait a moment," Shirou said, glancing at Saber and Archer. "Aren't familiars things like mice or cats with easily suppressed wills? I've even heard of spirits being used, but Servants are just too different from any of them." Of course, Shirou knew that familiars in worlds Administered by the Bureau could have human shape, but if they did, then they continuously drained a big portion of their master's power even if they weren't particularly powerful in battle, but Saber wasn't from any the territories of the Bureau that he knew of.

In any case, to have a familiar with human shape and still being strong enough to fight was a mark of prestige, of belonging to the elite of most powerful mages, and was strictly regulated by the law in dimensional space. It was still a law freely broken by many criminals, who occasionally used them as various types of slaves or even as intermediaries to keep themselves hidden.

"Well, Servants still belong in that category, though they are on a completely different level. To be more accurate they are Ghost Liners, the strongest kind of familiar," Tohsaka answered. "The Grail summons a Hero from the past and gives it a body, a container to exist in the world. The summons of a Master is more like a signal to have the Grail summon a hero, and create the familiar bond between them. Without such a powerful artifact, summoning a hero would be impossible."

"I don't understand," Shirou admitted. Vivio also looked like she had questions, but she was staying silent. "I can get that a powerful artifact like what you're saying the Grail is can summon things from across time, but how can it distinguish between a hero and someone who is powerful but never became famous?"

"Haven't you been taught that any humans, animals, or machines that leave any great achievements behind get removed from the ring of reincarnation and sublimate into beings of higher rank?" Rin asked Shirou. "Heroes are that sort of beings. To put it simply, they have been worshiped and made as unto gods. Of course, the container the Grail gives them isn't a real body, so they can switch between staying in astral form and having a body. Plus, to succeed at the great achievements that made them famous in the first place, they had to have had unmatched strength in the ages where monsters and beasts still walked freely, so Servants are uniformly superior to normal people, or to any magus."

"But what is this prize that everyone fights for?" Vivio asked. Of course, Shirou almost hadn't asked, but Vivio had noticed that they hadn't been told what the prize was.

"Isn't the name a pretty big hint? Although it isn't the one mentioned in the legends, the Magic Association gives the title of Holy Grail to anything that has the same kind of power as that one. For an artifact to get called the Holy Grail, it must be able to grant any wish."

Suddenly everything made sense to Shirou. There was no shortage of people with impossible dreams, ambitions or wishes that they wanted to have so much that they'd kill six other people to do it. Even without wish granting artifacts, people could kill thousands of other people to get what they wanted, and magi from Earth were a breed without the morals to care about who'd get in the way of what they wanted.

Even the Jewel Seeds and the Book of Darkness, two very powerful wish granting Lost Logia that ended up on Earth, were explained. If there had been enough wish granting artifacts to make giving them the 'Holy Grail' title a standard protocol instead of using their individual names, then Earth was a veritable farm of wish granting artifacts. And power called to power. Well, that was Shirou's theory.

"Okay, if you don't have any more question, that means we are done here. Let's get going." Tohsaka said, standing from her seat.

"Going? But, where?" Shirou asked.

"To the Mediator. Since the war is a battle to the death between magi, the Church appoints a mediator to serve as a neutral judge that everyone can trust. He can provide sanctuary to the masters who have lost their Servants but are still alive, to clean up after the battles between Servants that happen in public places, to preserve the secrecy of magic or even to offer Command Seals to the Masters as the prize of doing a particular task."

Shirou looked over to Saber. She had stayed silent through the conversation, until Rin she felt that Rin had overstepped the bounds of politeness. He guessed that she had been a knight, which was kinda supported by her armor and general attitude. At his look, she simply returned it. Wanting to avoid a pointless staring contest, Shirou spoke.

"What do you think?"

Saber thought for a moment before answering. "It is as she says, Master, she didn't lie to you in her explanation. But having the mediator as an enemy would be troublesome, and showing up means that an enemy Master could see us and perhaps attack from the shadows in the journey. Going in the day would be safer, if your night has been as dangerous as you said, Master."

Shirou nodded, and turned back towards Tohsaka. "I think we'll won't be going for a few hours, at the very least until dawn. Maybe we can meet there?"

Rin pierced Shirou with her eyes. "Of course, you realize that the next time we meet, it will be as enemies," Rin warned Shirou. "We are both Masters in the Holy Grail War, so we'll meet again sooner or later, and only one of us will walk away."

"I don't care about that," Shirou said with a smile. "Masters don't need to fight, do they? They only do it because defeating someone like Herakles or Achilles would be really hard, even if you have someone that strong by your side. But you aren't the type of person to do that. You're a good person."

"You think that I won't kill you the next chance I have?" Rin demanded, now. Archer had walked until he stood behind Rin, punctuating her words with his presence. "We are enemies in the Grail War, you can't expect mercy from anyone, even me."

Maybe it was because he'd been told about how the Jewel Seed and Book of Darkness incidents had gone, or maybe he was just like that, but Shirou insisted. "Even so, I don't think you're my enemy, Tohsaka."

"Don't you understand?" Rin said heatedly. "There is no place for mercy in the Grail War. There have gas leaks around town for the last few weeks, and all signs point to the works of a Servant. Mercy will get you killed if you give it to someone that will use anything to win!"

"But you are not the kind of person who would hurt bystanders, Tohsaka," Shirou responded calmly. "I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. If you were as bad as you said, you'd have just left me without an explanation."

"I just don't like being in debt! It was in exchange for you stopping your Saber form attacking my Archer while our guard was down!" Rin yelled, her cheeks flush with exertion.

"That was in thanks for trying to heal me back at the school. And you wouldn't have tried to do that if you weren't a good person form the beginning, Tohsaka." Shirou countered again, still smiling at the girl.

Shirou saw Rin's cheeks redden in anger, before she grabbed the bridge of her nose.

"Enough!" She exclaimed. "I've decided, you're an idiot who lucked out summoning Saber. Next time, I won't show you any mercy, you hear?" And with that she walked out of Shirou's property with Archer in tow. Saber, Shirou and Vivio followed them and closed the doors, until the blonde Servant mentioned that Archer had left her own detection range.

"Vivio, can you set up the connection while I clean up?" Shirou asked.

"Sure thing, Shirou," the other teen answered, leaving for another room. Saber remained his silent shadow, though Shirou guessed that while she felt that she had nothing to contribute at the moment, they still could be attacked in their own house and took it upon herself to guard him as he went to his room to change his clothes.

Shirou was almost by his room when he heard Vivio's mental message, "-Shirou, did you leave the servers off? Never mind, they were just in standby-"

Unlike most of their teachers, mentors and friends, neither Shirou nor Vivio belonged to the Saint Church or to the TSAB. However, they were still citizens under their purview, which afforded them several rights and duties. One of the duties was reporting dangerous Lost Logia Incidents, as possible. The other was reporting incidents that could create Dimensional Rifts or Dislocations. And while the Grail may not necessarily classify as a Lost Logia, it certainly was a very powerful magical artifact and from Tohsaka's explanation, it handled enough power that if something went wrong a destructive dimensional event could happen.

Shirou only planned on warning his teacher, and trust him to contact the relevant authorities, but he expected that everyone would end up involved with this Grail War. The TSAB also considered dealing with magical catastrophes in some Non Administered Worlds as part of their calling, within the stipulations written in their laws.

It was a couple minutes later that Saber, Vivio and Shirou stood in one of the rooms of the house, staring at a screen in the wall. They stared at some generic loading screen, awkwardly ignoring each other. Shirou didn't know what to say, not knowing how to break the odd tension that filled the room. Saber didn't feel like saying anything, though she was silently annoyed by the atmosphere. And Vivio wanted to talk to Shirou without Saber getting in the way, but she didn't want to make it obvious to the Servant.

In the end, it was Shirou who broke the silence, "Saber, can you really turn into a spirit?"

The Servant shook her head. "I don't know what happened when I was summoned but I can't, Master."

"Again with that title, I didn't say anything before because, but please call me Shirou, that's my name." Shirou told her.

"I see," Saber said, trailing off as she considered his words. "I think...I'd like that, Shirou."

"And call me Vivio, please." Vivio requested. "I don't really like being called a lady."

"Very well, Vivio." Saber answered.

At that moment, the animated loading screen froze, while a group of other, smaller red screens floated in front of the first one. Vivio immediately frowned.

"Errors?" Vivio said, mostly to herself.

"Vivio?" Shirou asked.

"I can't connect to anyone in Mid Childa. I'm not even getting Ramaqen's or Mid Childa's error screens, just your standard Comm Buoy ones," Vivio explained. "I tried everyone, but nothing went through to anyone."

This made Shirou frown. "Not even the Saint Church?"

"Not in Mid Childa," Vivio answered.

"The Saint Church?" Saber asked. "You have allies within the Church?"

"You mean the Church in Rome?" Shirou asked. At Saber's nod, he continued. "No, we..." he looked at Vivio, who just shrugged. As far as she was concerned, Saber was going to find out about the Bureau when they talked with the adults, so she'd figured that Shirou had already decided to explain things to the Servant. "...we have allies in a Church, just not one on Earth."

"Explain," Saber said. It lacked an imperative tone, yet it still sounded like an order. Shirou sent Vivio a pleading look.

Vivio, who had the best grades in history back at Mid Childa, began explaining. "Well, nobody is sure about where Humanity appeared first, but sooner or later they found a way to use magic to travel to other places. They traveled farther and faster until something called the Sea of Dimensions was discovered. In that place, it was possible to find other worlds to live in relatively easily, so people began starting new cities and kingdoms everywhere. Many countries and kingdoms rose and fell, and now the Time-Space Administration Bureau is the dominant ruling body over all known planets."

Shirou continued the explanation, seamlessly taking over. "The Bureau is something between a federal government and a neutral party between member worlds. Other than the member worlds called Administered Worlds, there are two kinds of worlds, uninhabited and non-administered. The final category is for lost or destroyed worlds, like Al-Hazard or Belka. Non Administered Worlds either can't reliably reach the Sea of Dimensions or even outer space near their planets, or declined from joining the Bureau for their own reasons."

"Then, why hasn't Earth ever heard of any of this?" Saber asked.

"Well," Vivio began. "There are several reasons, but nobody knows for certain. Our teacher said that the leading theory is that most worlds hid or lost the technology and knowledge from most people until it was publicly rediscovered or they got visited by someone who did. He said that, like with the Tower of Babel, many planets have histories or myths that told of a great diaspora in the past. I guess that Earth was one of the worlds that lost it, or maybe someone knows and its keeping it hidden."

Saber frowned, and looked down. "This is odd, your words mention things that sound familiar, yet I'm sure that the grail didn't grant this knowledge during the last war."

"The Grail grants knowledge to the Servants?" Vivio asked.

Saber nodded. "The grail gives the Servants general knowledge of how the modern world works and an understanding of modern languages. Even if a powerful hero is summoned, it is useless if the Master and the Servant can't understand a word of what the other is saying."

"Then, maybe the Grail takes the knowledge from the Masters?" Shirou suggested.

An insistent beeping blared from the screen, interrupting their conversation. Shirou turned to ask Vivio, who had begun fiddling with a new screen and tapping incessantly for a few seconds. "Who is it?"

"It has Admiral Lowran's ID. It was trying to break into the channel we're calling from, but the security programs did their job well. I'm patching it up through the screen."

The Admiral's face appeared on screen. Admiral Leti Lowran was an attractive woman who still looked youthfull, with white skin, violet hair, glasses on her stormy eyes and four dots in a rhombus on her forehead. She was looking surprisingly frazzled, given that on the background they could see the bridge of a TSAB ship. "Vivio Takamachi? Is Shirou Emiya there with you?" She asked. Her voice was surprisingly even, though it was obvious she was doing it on purpose.

"I'm right here, Admiral." Shirou said, scooting closer to Vivio.

"I see. My apologies, the connection on my end isn't very clear, and the edges of the screen are just static," the official apologized. "I'll cut to the point. Earlier today, the two of you were present in Ramaqen making use of a prize you earned in a tournament?"

"Yes," Shirou and Vivio answered at the same time.

"Why did you leave? I understand that the prize lasted for a whole other week, at least?" The violet haired woman asked, with her eyes straying slightly. It was some sort of report she was reading, Shirou knew. Screens with classified or private information could be filtered out of a transmission, even erasing reflections on reflective surfaces like eyes or pens, but the actions of the person making the call, like glancing at a report, were not hidden normally on video calls.

"We only got permission to skip this much time from school. We just got home a couple minutes ago." Shirou answered. Narrowing his eyes, he realized something, and asked. "You can't contact Mid Childa either, can you?"

"Correct." Was the Admiral's answer. "Do you have anything to add? Anything you may have noticed will help us figure out what's wrong."

"There was a meteor shower falling above Ramaquen. It wasn't detected until it was very close, so it became quite popular in a short time and a lot of people came out to see it," Shirou mentioned. "But when we were leaving there was some interference in the air that was slowing down communications and affecting information systems."

"Is that what was happening? Are you sure?" The woman asked.

"Yes. I arrived a bit later than Shirou did because I was receiving some data and the transfer rate was very slow, so Shirou had to give them the target coordinates because they lost their own." Vivio said. "I can send you Sacred Heart's records of that time, if you want," she offered.

"Please send them," Admiral Lowran asked. "They'll be a lot of help." A small screen with a progress bar appeared near the biggest screen, finally dispersing the error screens that had remained there until then.

While Sacred Heart sent the data, Shirou made a question, "is there anything you can tell us? If something happened, then a lot of people we know must have been caught up in it..."

"I'm sorry," Admiral Lowran apologized. "But until we know more, all detail are classified to the highest levels. Perhaps later, when things settle down some, we will be able to tell you something." Mentioning that they couldn't contact Mid was pushing it, already.

"I see..." Shirou said. The progress bar filled, and a soft alert noise let everyone know that the transfer was complete.

"Don't worry," Admiral Lowran said. "Everyone is working hard, so we'll fix this together, okay? I have to go now."

"Goodbye, Admiral," Vivio said.

"Thank you for letting us know," Shirou added.

The video screen vanished, replaced by a menu written in Mid Childan runes. Shirou and Vivio, who were sitting close enough to

"It looks like we left at the last moment," Vivio noted, turning to hug Shirou, burying her head in his neck. The boy immediately hugged her back as Saber stood silently to the side, watching them. Vivio wasn't crying, and neither was Shirou, but their hearts were feeling heavy. A jamming effect that affected even magical communications and computing systems, followed by total planetary silence and disruption in communications inside the Sea of Dimensions, all in five minutes...they could have been cause by many things. But running though the minds of the two mages was one option they were too wise to dismiss out of hand and too scared to really contemplate.

Dimensional Dislocation.















Glossary:
弓矢様: Literally Bow and Arrow Manner/style. 弓矢 is bow and arrow in Japanese, while 様 can be used as the kanji for the sama suffix, or as the kanji meaning 'style/manner/situation' when used as a part of actual words. It was the translation of "Mode" I felt most comfortable with, plus it came with a single-syllable reading, which makes people and devices intoning it in (most likely fast paced) combat a little easier to swallow. You still need to suspend your disbelief, though.

剣道投射砲: A construction from 電磁投射砲: Railgun. Breaking it up lke this: 電磁: electromagnetic 投射: Throwing/launching, 砲: cannon and substituting the Electromagnetism part for Swordmanship (kendo<->剣道), the result should technically mean something like "Sword (Launching) Canon" or "Canon that fires swords". I hope! Also, the translation is a call out to the Wave Motion Gun.


On this chapter...you will find a lot of explanations that you could've had by being familiar with either side of the crossover, but... as someone who's been introduced to several fandoms via crossovers with fandoms I am alreeady familiar with, I like making things clear in-fic. Combined with the world building I end up making almost out of habit, then there are sections of the fic that people who are already familiar with the explanations will skip.

Let them skip them, if they did that, they probably didn't need them in the first place.

It may be a bit late to put it, but if you want to quickly shift between a spell in the fic and the glossary's entry for that translation, use ctrl+F (Windows, Linux) or Command+F (Mac) and put the kanji in the search box. Most browsers should be able to do this.

Also, dun Dun DUN.

Though if you paid attention to what I've talked about in SB, then it may not be so dun Dun DUN.

Let me know what you think.

 

[grant]

To be honest it feels that things moved very quickly (and not with much setup).

 

[EagleCeres]

The Kerry + Yuuno scene feels a bit out of place where it is, while it's solid for a flashback and helps as an integration point for the F/SN and MSLN 'verses, it doesn't seem to be needed to explain why Kerry decided Shirou should get taught MidChildan Magic style instead of classic Earthen Thaumaturgies.

It feel's like more it's there just to say "ohey the worlds met" for no particular reason. Was the scene meant to be an alternate intro or just chapter specific?

 

[lethum]

The Kerry + Yuuno scene feels a bit out of place where it is, while it's solid for a flashback and helps as an integration point for the F/SN and MSLN 'verses, it doesn't seem to be needed to explain why Kerry decided Shirou should get taught MidChildan Magic style instead of classic Earthen Thaumaturgies.

It feel's like more it's there just to say "ohey the worlds met" for no particular reason. Was the scene meant to be an alternate intro or just chapter specific?

...while that scene doesn't explain how Shirou came to learn the magic he uses in my fic, it establishes the event in time (or in fic's the time-line at least) and it gives it a 'mood' or 'feel' and a context. Something tangible "inside" the fic, so that nobody has to seek my explanation in a thread or a review.

The scene is specific to the chapter. The information in that flashback is there because it is what I wanted the readers to know it, but I preferred to show it than to tell it.

 

[Jomasten]

Uh, is there a story before this, or did I just jump into the middle?

Or are we,as readers, immersing ourselves into the thick of things, with the occasional back story here and there?

 

[lethum]

Uh, is there a story before this, or did I just jump into the middle?

Or are we,as readers, immersing ourselves into the thick of things, with the occasional back story here and there?

The answer is yes.

 

[Garahs]

Personally, I greatly dislike that writing format. It makes it feel like the story is poorly stitched together.

 

[lethum]

I personally disagree. However, if you still wish to read despite this, I hope it won't bother you too much.

 

[ecs05norway]

I'm enjoying it so far.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

Setting aside opinions and thoughts about the In Media Res for later, I am certainly looking forward to more of this.

But if Archer isn't a potential future version of this variation on Emiya Shirou, his purpose as anything other than a joke is greatly diminished. It's not facing yourself when the opponent isn't yourself.

I mean "joke" literally; not as something of poor quality, but as something meant to amuse. In this case, lighthearted laughing at Archer for being so confused about the different world in which he finds himself, and a Shirou who diverged from him four years before the War.

Canonically, Archer's divergence point from Shirou is the War, when Rin summons someone else as Archer instead of EMIYA. Without his future self as a warning, there is the possibility of becoming that future self.

On that note, it might be interesting to see fanfic writers explore possible "Archers who never became Archer despite not meeting Archer", with Rin summoning a variety of different Archer-class Servants who are not any form of Emiya Shirou.

 

[lethum]

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou​

Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen
​

Yuuno Scrya was a very happy man. He was currently watching his two students desperately dodge and shield against barrages of powerful magical bullets, magically enhanced swarms of summoned creatures and two berserker drugged mages that were using cartridges like they were candy after having broken their own tournament seals in their rampage. He also looked oddly happy for someone whose students were in such dire straits.

By all rights his students should have been overpowered long ago. Not only had their powers been sealed down to C rank as specified by the rules of the tournament, but their enemies had broken the seals –a valid tactic according to the rulebook- and were putting enough power in a single spell to kill Shirou and Vivio many times over. Berserker as they were, nobody was certain if their spells were deliberately lethal or if simply they had lost the clarity of mind to decide against choosing to use lethal force.

But the truth is that finding out about the Throne of Heroes from Shirou's father had lit a metaphorical fire under Yuuno’s feet. He had felt incredibly enthused by the mere thought of something like the Throne of Heroes existing. Consequently, he had trained his students quite a bit more rigorously than he would otherwise have. The world seemed freer and bigger after this revelation, and a long suppressed sense of adventure finally freed itself from the old guilt he felt at the trials that had befallen on Nanoha after letting it truly loose for once.

It wasn't that he aiming to enter himself or his students into the Throne of Heroes. He just knew that he could push his students harder because people could be pushed harder. Because people had been pushed harder and thrived. Because he believed that both of his students had the potential to accomplish wonders, and that those wonders were of a scale that he hadn’t dared imagine since he’d begun reading his first Science Fiction book.

But between his students, Vivio was the hardest to teach. She was the product of centuries of careful breeding and even more careful genetic manipulations, tested by fate time and time again against factions with resources on interplanetary scales and motivated to do nothing but tear her line down by might or guile. She'd learn everything he taught her and make it into the most effective combination of it...with time. For all that she learned fast and that her instinct was spot on, she benefited the most from actually experiencing the act of acting her choices out, and dealing with the consequences of what she could do to refine her combat skill to its utmost.

So he taught her healing. And then he taught her illusions, transportation, summoning, bombarding, shooting, shielding, field spells, spell interception, mana conversion, evocation and everything else he could manage. And then he taught Shirou how to match, counter and overcome anything she could do, without turning him into a fighting machine useless against anyone other than Vivio. Though he still felt that it was Shirou’s own merits that had avoided that fate, not his own admittedly heavy handed interference.

In fact, Yuuno was the only reason why Shirou had enough power available to combat in the same scale as Vivio, thanks to a medical procedure –closer to a ritual, really- that he had essentially created himself. He'd also designed and developed the style that Shirou used, along with his device. And if that wasn't enough, he also had directly taught him almost every spell Shirou knew. In a sense, Shirou's current combat prowess was more of a testament to Yuuno's own mastery of all things magical than anything else. Even if by now, Shirou had come into his own, designing his own spells and tactics with only minimal input from him, the majority of his arsenal still came from Yuuno one way or another.

But the results were evident. Shirou and Vivio were steadily and stealthily disabling everything that their opponents used against them. He saw with pride as an illusionary copy of Vivio lead a small swarm of summoned metal birds right into a car sized fireball aimed at an illusionary copy of Shirou. The Vivio copy came out of the other end of the fireball, with her barrier jacket smoldering and scorched in places, and produced a pair of wicked looking swords before starting to swing them at the mage before her.

The illusion didn't succeed at striking the other mage even once, since its attacks kept on being dodged, but it succeeded in herding that particular enemy to where the real Vivio was waiting with an attack prepared. Her Impulse Cannon, if Yuuno didn't miss his guess. The resulting impact broke with great ease through the shield spell that their enemy raised instinctively, and imbedded him in the ground of the tournament's battlefield.

Shirou hadn't been resting in place, however. He had been hiding among the clashing rains of projectiles, easily navigating through the bullet hell of swords, magic bullets and flying summons with an ease that spoke of long practice. He was acting far more careful than someone who could fly so freely should, but when the other enemy charged him at unbelievable speed, his careful approach was rewarded with the perfect opening to dismantle his enemy with a short and decisive series of strikes that resulted in the other mage landing on the ground, pinned to it by blades a meter away from his partially interred teammate.

Yuuno was proud of his students. He was proud of Vivio, whose every instinct would show her a path that could lead her to victory, and who still had her whole life before her to grow even more. He was proud of Shirou, whose every action defied the fate that would keep him from following his ideals, chasing them with all his strength against impossible odds and succeeding. And he was proud of Nanoha, whose immense talents, great work ethic and incredible zero-to-hero origins had already carved her name in inter-dimensional history. He was proud of how Shirou and Vivio dealt with the desperate final recourse of their enemies, self-destruction, saving them from a pointless death and handily winning their match.

As someone who had come to see himself as a teacher before a Librarian or an Archaeologist, Yuuno Scrya was indeed a very happy man.

















Tohsaka Rin was a model student, a school idol and a powerful magus. With nothing but reference books, partially outdated research journals and a fake priest that doubled as a subpar magus as a teacher, she was not only superior to almost all of her peers in the same age bracket but she also surpassed even full-fledged magi at the peak of their skill when it came to magecraft. Even in her own family, she was one of the most skilled members in record.

And yet, she hadn't discovered that Emiya Shirou was a magus. Or worse, Takamachi Vivio, with whom she held regular contact as one of the people that the school population pretty much worshiped. It would have been fine on some level if he'd just been some informed mundane, but a magus is a dangerous creature that hides from the mundane world for their own purposes, shrouded in mystery by their own design. Knowing that they could use mysteries very distanced from any kind of magecraft she had heard of, at a level of power that allowed them to survive a defensive fight against Servants was simply contradictory to what she knew or even suspected of her.

Even assuming that it was somehow related to the Fifth, and that their teacher was the Blue, the True Magician’s magecraft still followed magecraft's rules as long as she didn't resort to her true magic. Not to mention that from her admittedly limited experience, passing down a True Magic was very time intensive and inherently difficult. Those two, assuming that they shared similar magical skill sets, remained enigmas. Well, Takamachi could still be an informed mundane, like many priests of the church, but she doubted it.

To think that Shirou'd been able to use mystery on a level that she'd thought it was a Noble Phantasm even before summoning and contracting with his own Servant filled her with an odd mix of admiration and contempt that she didn't know how to deal with. The voice of her Servant reached her and shook her out of her thoughts.

"It wasn't magecraft." He said. Rin resisted the urge to frown. "I have some skill with Orthodox Magecraft, and I can tell that it wasn't magecraft as it is understood by modern magi."

Without speaking out loud, Rin responded. "So you understand what he was doing? What was he doing, if it wasn't magecraft?" She asked. The simplest alternatives she could conceive of were one of the psychic powers that occasionally turned up or nonhuman heritage, but what she'd seen had been too complex and versatile for the first and it lacked the tell-tale signs that betrayed the second one.

"I don't really have a word for what was being done, but it wasn't magecraft," Archer explained. "In a sense it was similar to Marble Phantasms, in that the rules of nature weren't being interfered with, but it still was a deliberate interference with the natural flow of the world. It's closer to the results of purely technological devices than to actual enacted mysteries."

It didn't really answer Rin's questions. As far as understanding their mysteries went, she still knew next to nothing. And considering that they were enemies in the Grail War, that ignorance could measure the distance between her life and death. Emiya Shirou and Takamachi Vivio. She narrowed her eyes fractionally. She was on the verge of remembering something that could be important.

The lunch bell rang, and she quickly gathered her things and left for the ceiling with her astralized Servant in tow. Her classroom was much closer to the stairs than Shirou's was, so she found herself on the isolated corner of the school's rooftop before anyone else arrived. A quick check of her work showed her that everything was working exactly as it should. Behind her, Archer materialized without a word.

She took out her lunch from her bag, and rested her back against the fence that surrounded the place. She didn't eat. That would be rude, even if Emiya was taking his time to show up. A small alarm she had set up rung, and she turned her attention towards the door she had locked after climbing the stairs that led to it. It and the spell she had cast on the lock were simple precautions that wouldn't stop a magus, but would keep normal students from interfering.

Like she expected, the door opened without a pause. It meant that Shirou was competent enough to bypass her little lock at least, which taught her a little about his magic's abilities. So she was surprised when, instead of Shirou or Vivio like she expected, she saw a foreigner girl dressed in an unfamiliar school uniform. Before she could do much of anything, the two people who she was expecting followed behind the first.

Rin turned back to the foreigner girl again, to guess from her looks why Shirou would involve her. She was taken aback as soon as she recognized that the girl was Saber, the Servant that Emiya Shirou had summoned. The change was really superficial, Saber hadn't even changed her hair style, and yet she, who should have recognized her as a Servant right away, was actually fooled.

It was probably a hint at whatever hero Saber had been in life, but that wasn't the point of the meeting.

"I see that you didn't forget to come, Shirou. Good morning," Rin said with the same tone she'd use to mention that it was a sunny day. Shirou stood back and pushed the door closed.

"Good Morning," Shirou and Vivio responded in chorus. "We came as soon as we could," the redhead continued.

"Why don't we talk as we eat? There's no point in wasting the lunch break," Rin offered.

The others in the school's roof agreed and soon enough they all had opened their respective lunch boxes and begun eating. Shirou was the one who broke the silence to start the conversation.

"So, did you want to talk about the bounded field over the school?" He asked. He'd felt 'something' as soon as he'd entered the school, but it was while he was examining the Archery Club's equipment that he'd realized that he was practically sitting on top of a mysterious magic circle connected to a barrier that surrounded the school. It was in a magic style that was utterly alien to anything he'd met before, so neither Lotus Blade nor Sacred Heart had had time to make any sense of it.

"Yes. That field is the reason why I was here last Saturday. I noticed when it went up a few days ago, so I came to investigate as soon as I summoned my Servant." Rin answered.

A pause.

"Thank you for that time, Tohsaka. You really saved me," Shirou said, thankful.

"You already thanked me once, there's no need to keep doing it." Rin said, looking annoyed. "In any case," the magus said when she regained her composure, "that bounded field is a disgusting thing, like the inside of a stomach that will eat the blood and meat within it. Haven't you noticed how listless people are? I tried investigating during the lunch breaks, but all I could find were just decoys."

"Do you know who could have done it?" Shirou asked.

"I know that it was done by a Master, and it has the whole school inside it," Rin explained. "The preparation phase for it is very slow, so I had time to check some suspects. I've got some ideas, but I don't have any proof yet. …Well, I knew there was another magus in this school, but a magus doesn't necessarily equal a Master. And when I checked that person, I didn't find any command seals."

"So we have no idea who it could be," Vivio said between bites. Beside her, Saber was quietly devouring her own lunch and watching in silence, letting the Masters talk while she looked out for enemies or spies.

"Well, there are cases where an amateur becomes a Master by accident," Rin admitted. "But since all we know is that they don't feel like a magus, then either their knowledge of magic is incomplete or they are very good at hiding. The latter would be very unlikely, unless..." Rin trailed off, turning to Vivio. "You are a magus and they are hiding as well as you."

"I'm...something else," Vivio admitted. "But we'd have found out if there was someone else like me in the school."

"Tohsaka." Shirou said, looking at a spot on the wall. "Are all the decoy's you've found like that?" He asked as he pointed at the place he was staring at with a finger. When the other people in the school's roof turned to see, they first saw simply an empty stretch of the wall. But by examining the spot a bit deeper, the unremarkable piece of the school's construction revealed a magic circle of an unknown make.

"Yes," Rin said, after looking at the circle for a moment. "But destroying it won't do anything, it just reappears somewhere else in the school if you do that."

"I see. The reason I mention this is because this morning in the Archery range I saw another one just like it." Shirou explained. "Only it was a lot bigger. I'm thinking that if all the decoys were like this one-"

Vivio finished the phrase "-then the one in the Archery range could be the nexus point. Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"I didn't know what the field did until just now." Shirou said. "And I didn't want to be overheard in case the field let somebody do that."

"Wait. You detected the field so fast but you didn't know what it did?" Rin asked the boy, showing minute signs of her beginning to lose her cool.

Shirou shook his head. "I can detect distortions in the natural order of things, not actual magical energy." He volunteered. This only seemed to incense the black haired girl even further, though it only showed as a tick in her eyebrow.

"Fighting right now will only turn the students into potential casualties," Vivio noted. "If we wait until the clubs go home before taking down the field, the students won't get used as hostages."

"Then we'll do that," Rin said with finality. "You don't mind if I watch the Archery Club practice, Shirou?"

"No problem," Shirou answered. "Anyone can watch the practice as long as they don't interrupt it. The school wants to encourage people to join or support the club since we won all those tournaments last year."

"Well, our school got quite famous because of that, so it's only natural that they want to continue that tradition," Rin said. "I heard you even got a dan rank after a tournament?"

"Those are just rumors," Shirou refuted. "I just got complimented by some of people in the public." They were actually some of the judges who also worked as judges on the highest level dan ranking examinations, and their praise hadn't been small, but Shirou hadn't known that. And he would have preferred to avoid the praise if he'd known.

"In any case, we are done here," Rin said. "Let's meet again later. Good bye." With that, the girl left the roof, avoiding all the traps she had set in the meantime.

"Alright." Shirou said. "Good bye Rin."

"See you later, Rin!" Vivio exclaimed, finally speaking after letting the other two teens talk.

"Saber?" Shirou prompted the Servant.

"Archer was a few blocks away with his bow out," she explained. Shirou nodded.

"So," Vivio began saying. "You two are using each other's first name, already."

"I- We are?" Shirou asked. "I didn't notice," he said as he tapped a finger on his chin.

Shaking her head with a mock rueful smile, Vivio spoke, "if you're done with your food, let's go find Sakura. I heard that she was looking for us before class."

"Alright, just let me finish here," Shirou said.

After Shirou finished his food, the three of them went off to find Matou Sakura, but they didn't find the girl in any of the places they went to. After checking up the Archery range and her classroom, they finally gave up on finding her before classes begun again. Hurrying back, they returned to their own classroom in time to hear the bell ring and signal the end of the lunch period, after which the teacher entered the room.

The class passed by slowly, as if acknowledging the presence of the bounded field in the background gave it a greater foothold into Shirou's and Vivio's senses. Saber was a picture perfect student, studiously taking notes on the topic of the class without looking even the least bit distracted, even if Shirou knew that she was probably looking out for the enemy Master or Servant that had put the students in danger.

Shirou eventually managed to focus himself on class and focus on his work, pushing the murderous bounded field to the back of his mind. But even though it helped, he couldn't help but notice how the rest of the class seemed to squirm lethargically in place, or how even the teacher seemed less focused in his lecture than usual.

The final bell came far later than any of them expected, but they wasted no time in getting up and leaving their seats. Several classmates approached them to talk or just to hang out, but they were able to excuse themselves without much difficulty. However, they couldn't move too fast, since the halls were still full of the students that were leisurely leaving the school. Or perhaps lethargically was a better world, since they were still being affected by the field around the school.

They walked side by side in a relaxed silence, ignoring the stares and whispers directed at them. Shirou and Vivio were popular among the populace of the school, and Saber was a beautiful foreigner, so it was normal for them to be stared at from afar. At the same time, all three of them were also used to it, and were able to ignore it in favor of mentally preparing for the confrontation that would come when, or if, the Master or Servant responsible for the field reacted to their planned destruction of the field.

However, trouble found them before they reached the archery range. In their path, a boy with dark wavy hair and a smirk on a face that was filled with an indistinct mix of arrogance and pride stood alone in the way to the range, content with waiting for them to come closer. When they got close enough, he finally spoke. "Vivio! I've got something to ask you." Sparing a glance filled with a complex expression at Shirou and Saber, he continued. "Alone."

"Please don't address me with such familiarity, Matou-san." Vivio responded, sounding offended while talking in a polite tone. Shinji's expression flinched at the rebuke, but he looked ready to persevere.

"I'll go ahead to open the clubhouse. Vivio?" Shirou asked, but not before glancing meaningfully at Saber.

"I'll go with you. If you have anything to say, I'm sure that it can wait until the Archery clubs is done, Matou-san." Vivio told Shinji. With his smirk finally falling off his face, it was replaced by a scowl that took away any notice of good looks of his face.

"It can't wait," Shinji insisted, taking a step towards Vivio. Saber immediately steeped between them and put the tip of her wooden practice blade in his throat, still inside the fabric she had enveloped it with.

"Don't." She warned him frostily. Her glare was like a physical pressure that forced the student several steps back, his scowl twisted in partially concealed fear. Unseen to everyone else, a spirit jumped back to his side. Saber's glare slid over to it before she lowered her training sword and returned to Vivio's and Shirou's side.

Shinji glared impotently at the three before turning around in a huff, only to see Tohsaka Rin and Mitsuzuri Ayako exiting the main building of the school and walking towards the archery range. When the two girls ignored him and walked around him, the boy's hands tightened into fists at his side before he stormed away.

"That was odd," Shirou commented. "But I still have to open the range."

A small group of students, all members of the Archery club, had stopped around the commotion. Seeing this, Shirou hurried to unlock and open the range, followed by all the people from the club that ad already arrived. He had exchanged glances with Saber and Vivio after she had confronted the student, but they hadn't spoken a word of what had happened.

As Shirou and the rest of the members from the Archery club began to practice, split into groups by seniority in the club and skill, while Vivio, Rin and Saber sat on some chairs that had been placed in the archery building for spectators at some point, along with a pair of first year girls that sat at the other end of the row of seats. Meanwhile Ayako and Shirou were seamlessly taking turns in giving instructions to the various club members, guiding them through the warm up.

"The boy that bothered you had a Servant with him, Vivio." Saber said as soon as they sat, taking care to keep her voice from reaching other people.

"Did you know what class the Servant was, Saber?" The blonde girl asked.

"I think it was a Rider, or an Assassin," the Servant said after a moment's pause. The Servants belonging to the knight class were already identified, and the huge Servant of the Einzbern could only be a Berserker. Furthermore, a Caster most likely wouldn't be in the front lines where they could be discovered by other Servants and defeated outside their own territory.

"Wait, are you saying that Matou is a master?" Rin asked, somewhat incredulous.

"There was an astralized Servant with him." Saber said. "In the last war there was a master that used an ally as a decoy Master, and another who split the Command Seals and the prana connection between him and his ally."

"You remember previous summonings? That's impossible," Rin said, shocked. "Servant's shouldn't be able to remember other times you've been summoned."

Saber didn't react, and Vivio decided to ignore the tangent, and instead asked. "So Matou-san is the one that put the barrier on the school?"

Rin answered, "Yes. The spirit that Saber saw must have been his Servant. He's not a magus, but he's the kind of person that'd try to do something so repulsive, so I can believe that he'd do something as awful as placing this field on a school."

This time, Saber spoke, "not necessarily. It is also possible for a Master to use another Master as a decoy Master until their usefulness comes to an end."

"So you think that someone else is making him do this?" Vivio asked. "It does seem a little foolhardy to set up a spell that while you're still at ground zero," she commented.

"If it's a Bounded Field," Saber said, "it could be designed to avoid affecting him, or maybe being the Master grants him protection from its effects. If there is a real mastermind and that person realizes that there is more than one enemy Master that could be targeted simultaneously by activating the field, then it would be logical for a villain to strike and eliminate as many enemies as possible, without regard for anyone who dies in the process. We should consider attacking before any innocent bystanders are put in danger."

"Matou-san isn't the kind of person who follows orders well," Rin said. "But if he really is the Master and he isn't a magus, then he needs as many people as possible to be in the school when he activates the Bounded Field. Luckily we have until tomorrow to-"

Rin's voice died in her mouth. The main seal of the bounded field, invisible to all who didn't possess magic, glowed an ominous red in an otherwise empty wall. The people with Magic Circuits could feel an invisible pressure as the air filled with a murderous intent, while the world took a muted red tint, like it was bathed in blood. The people without any kind of magic fell down to the ground like sacks of meat.

Rin, Saber and Vivio were on their feet and shielding themselves from the Bounded Field in a flash, but everyone else in the room was already on the floor or still falling down, bar Shirou who was holding Mitsuzuri in his arms and some of the people who'd fallen on other people and on the various objects around. But Shirou's gaze wasn't on the girl in his arms, it was directing a pleading look at Vivio.

Saber didn't stay in place. Before anyone could do anything, she had exchanged her school uniform and wooden sword for her armor and invisible weapon. Without a word, she had covered the distance between her and Shirou to stand between him and the glowing magic circle in the wall. Shirou's head moved to follow her then, but he only noticed that something was wrong the moment that the wall of the Archery room exploded to pieces.

He hugged Mitsuzuri's body to his own more tightly to him in response, but Saber was able to prevent any debris from hitting the Captain and Vice-Captain of the Archery Club. The Bounded Field that was pressing down everyone abruptly fell to pieces as soon as the wall its nexus was on was destroyed, but it was swiftly replaced by the purple tint of the barriers used by the Bureau.

Rin looked at Vivio in surprise. A magic symbol shaped like a triangle had appeared below the blonde's feet instants before a purple spherical bounded field appeared between hero open hands and expanded at the rate of an explosion. Every time the field touched one of the unconscious students, they disappeared, with the single exception of Ayako, who was laid on the ground by Shirou and vanished when the boy touched her forehead.

"What was that?" The black haired magus demanded.

"A Barrier," Vivio answered. "It will contain the damage to this place, without any witnesses."

Rin bit back a retort. It was not the time.

"Archer, can you come?" She asked through their connection.

"Lancer was also caught in the Bounded Field, Rin," came the measured response from the red clad Servant. "I'm moving to intercept."

Speaking out loud, Rin turned to Vivio. "Lancer got caught in your Bounded Field, but Archer is intercepting him." What the magus wanted to know the most was if Vivio had done that on an accident or if she'd planned to take Archer out of the equation from the beginning, but she knew better than to ask. Instead, what she was going to say died in her mouth when a roar filled the Archery Range.

Behind the wall that had been destroyed was a giant. Standing taller than anything inside the Archery range, the giant dominated the room without an effort. Its mere breathing was loud enough to make it hard to think, and its enormous muscles promised doom to anything that became its target. The giant carried an Axe-Sword made of stone that stood taller than normal people, and weighted far more than one.

Saber pointed her invisible blade at the general direction of the giant with her expression frozen in a determined frown, her muscles tensed in preparation for the coming combat. The continuous roaring, huge muscles, crude weapon, maddened panting and lack of any actual armor of the Servant before her told her that it belonged to the Berserker Class without a doubt. She clearly remembered that the last time she fought a Servant of that class, she'd achieved victory through pure luck. The emotional impact of the fight had made that kind of detail much clearer in hindsight.

This time, she aimed to win in straightforward battle against Berserker, treating him as if he was just as skilled in battle like the last enemy of this class she had faced. With this in mind, she took the initiative and jumped forwards towards the giant, only to stop and plant herself long enough to parry a diagonal downwards chop that cratered the ground of the building. She used that opening to step forwards and swing her sword towards the taller Servant's neck, only for the surprisingly fast reverse swing to force her to jump back out of range.

Of course, the other Servant didn't just allow her to widen the distance between them and chased her, but she was marginally faster. When the mad Servant swung his giant ax-sword in an arc Saber rolled under the blow and came up to strike him, but their weapons clashed instead. Despite the powerful forces involved, neither Servant moved an inch. Both clashes had happened in less than half a second.

For the three humans that were still in the out-building, the short clash had felt like two bombs had gone off almost simultaneously. And while Shirou and Vivio had been partially protected from the shock wave by their Barrier Jackets, Rin had no such thing to protect her from the busted eardrums and mild impact, having expected no such thing from her experience with Lancer and Archer's battle in the school the previous night. Even so, the three of them unanimously decided to get out of the building.

Several explosions shook the walls and the ceiling of the building, the clash of the powerful combatants great enough to crater the ground and open wide gouges on the roof and walls. The holes allowed the building to vent some of the pressure generated by the clashing Servants, but by giving air a somewhat stable if dynamic shape. A system of localized high and low pressure spots formed, threatening to bring the building down on their heads.

"We've got to find the Servant that made the Bounded Field!" Rin yelled over the sounds of battle. "If we let it go, then whoever is in charge will make it target normal humans!"

Shirou looked like he wanted to answer, but instead he jumped off to the side. Vivio did the same in the opposite direction after grabbing Rin, barely managing to dodge an invisible restraining spell that jailed the spot they were standing at in the ground. Shirou and Vivio didn't actually communicate their plan. Rather, both of their reactions accurately predicted and took into account each other's reaction.

Shirou was the first to see the apparent cause for the spell. And seeing the identity of the perpetrator he couldn't help but exclaim, "Kuzuki-Sensei!"

And indeed, the stoic teacher was charging at Shirou at incredible speeds. During his involuntary exclamation Shirou had lowered his blade, making him look wide open against any attack that his charging teacher would use. However, he was repeating the tactic he had used back when he arrived at the school almost two full days back, lowering the tip of his blade to the ground to cast a defensive spell.

"「斷空」 Split Sky," Shirou proclaimed, settling into a stance that would allow him to react quickly to any change in the battlefield.

Less than a second later, the teacher's strike was blocked by a slab of compacted ground stronger than rock that nonetheless was broken by the impact it received. The biggest piece of debris broken off the defensive wall was sent hurtling in Shirou's general direction and managed to score a glancing hit on his waist. However, when the teacher attempted to break off to attack from another angle he found that the ground in a perfect circle all around him also rose to impede him.

Instead of casting the defensive spell around himself, like he had the previous night, Shirou had cast it on the ground around his teacher in order to trap him. Pointing his sword at the suit clad teacher warily, he nodded in Vivio's direction. The blonde girl then took Rin's arm and pulled her forwards with her as Kuzuki-sensei got completely surrounded by the walls and as the Archery building finally gave out before the might of Saber's and Berserker's battle.

"Let's go, we've got to get out of the open," Vivio said as she urged the other girl forward.

"But Kuzuki-sensei isn't a magus," Rin pointed out, trying to keep up with the other girl's running speed. "The one that enhanced him must have been close. Even a Caster can't cast something so difficult from too far, and we're going into a building filled with potential hiding places."

When Vivio slowed down to a standstill, Rin thought for a second that she had convinced the other girl against entering the building, until the empty air in the entrance of the school building ceased to be uninhabited in favor of welcoming a tall woman with long purple hair. Almost immediately Vivio corrected herself, because before the individual before her wasn't exactly a human woman. She was tall, dressed in a tight black leather short dress and long leather boots with purple highlights, blindfolded and even sporting a sigil tattooed on her forehead, she was undoubtedly a Servant.

Vivio's advantage in combat had always been her uncanny instincts, which granted her the kind of awareness in battle that other people would need decades in combat to train. And those same instincts told her that in a fight against the woman in front of her, she was not going to win. But she could delay her for a few seconds, minutes if she was very lucky. Or at least outmaneuver her a single time.

The purple headed servant did not speak however, it was a person somewhere within the school, hidden from sight. Despite that, Vivio and Rin both recognized the voice from the first word, "kill them, Rider!"

And it was at that moment that Vivio made her move. When the blonde rushed forward at her maximum speed, Rider didn't even shift her stance. And when she was close enough to hit the Servant with a punch, the woman instead used a short knife at the end of a chain and punched her straight through the heart. Or so it seemed. The illusionary silhouette that Vivio had sent forward passed through Rider like a ghost and immediately jumped up, unimpeded by the floor of the next floor.

When her strike was ineffective, Rider dismissed the illusion as a distraction and looked over the grounds of the school, to where Rin and Vivio had landed safely a good distance away from where they'd been. But instead of rushing after them, the Servant began walking towards them in a deceptively slow ground eating stride that was far more intimidating that just charging in would have been.

At that moment, Sacred Heart's voice come from Vivio's body. "「Contact Mode」" A faint flash was emitted from her Barrier Jacket, signaling the successful mode shift to her most powerful defensive state. It involved dedicating every ounce of magical energy and processing power that Sacred Heart had into strengthening Vivio's defenses, leaving everything else, like flight or offensive spells, disabled. Like with most spells that Vivio had known since she was young, that one had only grown stronger as she aged and trained.

In the middle of the school's grounds there was another fight going. Or rather, the fight was happening above it. At some moment while Rin hadn't been paying attention the situation had changed dramatically. Kuzuki-sensei was still trapped in a wall that prevented him from moving away. Before the eyes of the Japanese magus, the defensive spell activated and created a curving wall that prevented the teacher from jumping away.

But Shirou wasn't occupied with his trapped teacher. Instead, he was flying in the air, exchanging magical attacks with a hooded person of indeterminate age, who was firing bolts and lances of magical energy that were skillfully dodged by the red headed magus. The sword in his hand had been exchanged for a metallic solid bow that he was carrying in his off hand, while he used his free hand to direct some of his own shooting spells in some direction.

It looked like a stalemate. While it could take many of the teen's spells to defend from a single one of the Caster class Servant -and she was sure that the other figure in the air had to be a Servant- sometimes two of the opposing magical attacks collided in the air and dispelled. Furthermore, the boy had to defend from only a small fraction from than what Caster was firing, because in the air he was far faster and maneuverable than the Servant.

But Rin wasn't about to bet on Shirou overcoming a Caster class Servant using magic, aerial combat or not. She looked around the school, trying to find anything she could do, when she saw a slab of rock, floating in the air between Caster and the general region where Vivio was using some kind of short ranged high speed movement spell to keep away from Rider. She was somehow withstanding powerful blows enough to retreat and leading the Servant in a merry chase, but Rin could see that using so much magic was beginning to put a stain on her body.

Before her eyes, she saw Shirou use a spell visually similar to what Vivio was using to close in to Caster and fire an arrow point blank. The resulting explosion managed to create a cloud of dust that prevented Rin from seeing what was happening, until Shirou came out of the cloud in a way that suggested that he had just attempted to punch Caster. Rather than be satisfied with that, one of Shirou's feet began glowing bright as the boy swung around in a spinning back kick that dispersed the dust but missed hitting the Servant. Caster had flown back to avoid the attack, and was clearly casting a spell that would either hit too hard or too fast for Shirou to defend in time.

The boy mage seemed to decide that staying close was against his best interests, and again used a high speed mystery to reappear closer to the ground but still facing Caster. The Servant decided against casting a single spell at that distance, knowing from experience that the boy would be able to dodge at that range. But she knew that by having put himself close to the ground, the youth had closed off many retreat options to himself. As she was casting spells, preparing to flood the area the boy was in with enough spells to make dodging impossible, Caster swooped down to box the boy in an even smaller area.

Just as Shirou had planned.

"Saber!" He yelled. "Now!"

The blonde Servant seemed to have been expecting the command because as soon as Shirou began speaking, she used both her own strength, the wind around her blade and the angle of her strike to send Berserker up in the air. The mad giant was unharmed by the maneuver, but he was unable to propel himself meaningfully and would be at the mercy of gravity until he touched the ground again. Knowing that her window of opportunity was short, Saber flew in a straight line that went past Caster and ended up where Rider was at the moment.

Caster had also heard the command and attempted to break off, but she had been committed to her course of action and she could only twist her body to minimize the wound that the passing Saber put on her torso. But that wasn't all, by any means. The whole plan had been to line up the two Servants the humans were fighting so that Saber could deal a surprise attack that would injure them enough to drive them off or make them weak enough that surviving them was manageable. Shirou had told this to both Saber and Vivio using telepathy, and then had spent the rest of his fight trying to set it up.

The problem had been that Caster was flying in the air and very unlikely to return to the ground, so Saber needed a way to quickly return to the ground and go after Rider once she had cut Caster. Knowing that, Shirou had levitated and directed a slab of rock from the archery building's roof so that Saber could use it as a platform to jump back down swiftly, and then informed Saber.

At that moment, Shinji was sent through a window in the second floor, breaking through the glass and spinning in the air until he fell on the ground on his left shoulder with a nasty crack and a pained scream. The boy laid crumpled on the ground, but he was in the right position to see Saber strike Rider and send her hurtling into the school building, crashing through several walls. A splatter of blood fell on the ground where the two Servants met, but Saber managed to avoid getting even a single drop of blood on her person.

Seeing Rider being struck down so easily, Shinji's expression twisted in anger and he yelled at the leather clad woman, "you worthless Servant! At least kill someone you useless thing!"

Nothing seemed to happen for a couple of seconds except for Saber rocketing back towards Berserker, who had been held floating a foot above the ground thanks to a levitation spell cast by Vivio. Saber stopped midway to her destination when a pulse of power and a bright light came from the place where Rider had been flung into. In an instant, everybody present, except probably for Berserker, realized that the only person who was visible from where Rider had been thrown was Souichirou Kuzuki, still pinned in place by Shirou's defensive spell.

Shirou reflexively released the spell, making the raised walls around the history teacher crumble to dust and allowing the teacher to jump to the side and away from a white comet of light that passed through the place he had been a fraction of a second earlier. The bright white line of light curved upwards, revealing that the white light had only been the trail of something so bright that it hid anything that could be seen inside almost perfectly.

"You dare!" Caster said between gasps from her place in the ground, her voice magically amplified. The servant was glaring hatefully at Shinji before muttering something between her teeth. In response, Shinji's arm began glowing with an ominous purple light and began raising higher and higher in the air, to the point where it lifted the boy off the ground altogether before leaving him there dangling like a puppet.

Shinji wasn't moving his free arm beyond a few twitches that made him moan in pain, and with good reason. The shoulder holding him in the air wasn't the one on which he had fallen earlier, but it had been left immobilized by his awkward position while his other arm was most likely broken by the fall from the a floor up. Coupled with that, the most he could do with his free arm was make it move a couple of inches before the pain made him stop. With his legs swinging uselessly below him, the boy could only twist his head to stare at the limb that was holding him aloft.

It was at that moment that Shirou realized what Caster was doing. But by then, it was already far too late for him to do anything. Even though he immediately flew at Shinji and tried to think of something to do, all he managed to do was stare at the fear in Sakura's brother eyes as the light on the other boy's arm flashed and then moved down sharply to cut through his own neck.

Shirou's feet hit the ground with a solid thump by the other master's side, only to see the body and head of the other boy go up in purple flames as soon as he landed. Turning back to Caster, he only managed to see a shadow envelop both the Servant and her Master before they vanished with it into the air. Returning his gaze back to Shinji's remains, he saw as the body had been quickly consumed by the flames until there was nothing left.

For a moment Shirou was left at a loss of what to do. But his body acted out of reflex, turning towards Berserker and falling into a defensive stance. That is when he saw her. The same red eyed, white haired and purple clad little girl from the market. The one that Saber had called a Master.

"You're very skilled, onii-chan," the girl complimented. "The Traveler must have taught you well."

Shirou stared at the white haired girl uncomprehendingly. "Who?"

A short glance to the side at Vivio revealed that she didn't know anything about it, either. Rin didn't say anything and nothing showed on her face, but it was clear that she wanted answers. Shirou turned back to the white haired little girl, the question plain on his face. “I don’t really keep up with other magecraft users.”

Seeing that Illyasviel still looked unconvinced, Shirou elaborated, "my father barely taught me the most basic things about magecraft and its world, but if there’s one thing that he made clear is that groups of magi are like minefields and that finding magi who I could come to like or respect was almost impossible, so I should just keep my distance.”

The girl wearing a purple hat didn't look happy at that, but she seemed to stop dismissing his words on principle. "Even in the last corner of Earth there's no guarantee that you won't be found, onii-chan. Your father made many enemies, after all."

"I already know what I plan to do with my life," Shirou responded after a small shrug. “And it will keep me away from magi unless they threaten the secrecy of magecraft."

Illyasviel was silent for a moment, before she asked with a subtly mocking tone. "So what did you learn magecraft for, gambling? Acting? Someone like the Traveler won't take a student without a good reason."

"Are you talking about Yuuno-sensei? I've never heard of anyone called the Traveler," Shirou said.

"The Traveler is just what people call him, he never gave a name," Illyasviel explained. "He is also the only person known to cast a barrier as big or as strong as this one," she finished, gesturing to the purple tinted ruins of the school. "And unless he's here and hiding, he must have taught you how to cast one."

"My teacher taught me almost all the magic I know, but I'm not very good at casting barriers," Shirou admitted. It was as a silent admission that Vivio was the one most likely to have done so, since the Tohsaka family magic couldn't and Vivio was his ally.

"If it’s like that, I guess I can forgive you for not showing up last night, onii-chan. So I won't kill you today," Illyasviel said carelessly, making her careless words sound even more terrifying. Nobody seemed to know how to react as Berserker carefully, almost gently, picked her up and sat her on his shoulder.

"Bye! You can call me Illya if you want!" Illyasviel said, waving at Shirou with all the innocence of a little kid. The ease with which she could talk about killing and possibly commit the act was more than a little unsettling, but the redhead had a question.

"Wait!" He yelled. Obligingly, Illyasviel stopped and turned on her seat to see him. "Why do people know my teacher? What happened?"

"You really are kept in the dark, aren’t you?" Illyasviel said with an odd tone that Shirou couldn't decipher. "The Traveler is the Twelfth Dead Apostle Ancestor.”

“What?”

The explanation was so unexpected that Shirou didn't think of stopping Illyasviel from leaving. Thankfully, he was not alone.

"Yuuno-sensei is not a vampire," Vivio said with such conviction that Shirou wondered why he'd thought otherwise for even an instant.

It was Rin who answered. "Not all Ancestors are vampires. Some of them are beings that killed one and that no dead apostle is willing to cross, or powerful beings that drink blood."

“Wait!” Shirou said. “Will somebody please explain when did this Traveler fight a vampire, how did anyone find out how it happened?”

It was Illyasviel who answered. Even though she was almost outside the school, in the near perfect silence of the barrier she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard clearly across the distance. “The twelfth was circling around a detachment from the Clock Tower through the countryside, but when he got within ten kilometers from the nearest inhabited state he was caught in a bounded field that killed him in an instant. The fastest kill of a Dead Apostle Ancestor on record.”

And then she left without another word.

Shirou turned to look at Rin, prepared to ask her what she knew about the situation with the ancestor, but she was staring to the side, looking at the distance where the sun’s bright light could be seen in a giant hemisphere that towered above the buildings.

“Archer and Lancer are still fighting?” Vivio asked.

“Yes,” Rin admitted. “From what I understand, Archer has confirmed Lancer’s identity after surviving his Noble Phantasm, but it seems like their clash damaged the barrier and they had to stop on account of all the witnesses. Lancer is trying to return to the barrier to keep fighting”

“Barriers don’t act like that,” Vivio said. “Either they remain whole, or they are broken. It shouldn’t be possible for a hole to just appear in one like that.” But even as she said that, she dropped the Barrier and allowed it to vanish completely. There was no point to keeping it up if it was no longer necessary.

Rin looked on as the damage dealt to the school building seemed to vanish with the barrier, leaving them standing in the middle of the school’s courtyard. A group of students that were joking around among themselves walked around the three magical teens while ignoring them like they were invisible. Saber stood to the side, once again clad in the uniform that Shirou had given her. Shirou could see the grass on their clothes, as if they had been lying on the ground a short time ago.

“Captain Emiya!” Came a shout from the side. When they turned to see who it was, they saw Mitsuzuri still clad in the uniform of the Archery team waving at them. “Are you alright?” The vice-captain asked when she got close enough. “I didn’t expect whoever was behind those gas attacks to target a school, but everyone in the Archery club was still lying on the floor when I came out to find you. Did they get you too, Captain?”

“We’re alright, Mitsuzuri,” Shirou answered, visibly placating the other girl.

Without missing a bit, Rin added “we were just trying to find the place from where the gas came, since it looked like we weren’t affected by it like everyone else. This was after trying to wake you, of course.”

“After a while everyone seemed to wake up, so we were just on our way back,” Vivio mentioned. Saber had walked over to stand beside Shirou, opposite from Vivio who was on his left.

With that, the group returned to the Archery building to tend to the other members. It seemed like they were uninjured and merely unconscious, since the bounded field used by Shinji’s Servant had only lasted a few seconds. The fact that those few seconds had been enough to knock out almost everyone in the school was terrifying enough.

While Shirou and Mitsuzuri continued leading the day’s practice of the Archery Club, Vivio managed to convince Rin of following them home to answer a few questions on Illyasviel’s parting shot, while Saber kept a watchful eye on Archer’s invisible form.

At the temple on top of the mountain, a Witch cared for a teacher.

Guarding them both from the gates of the temple, a guardian stood unnoticed and vigilant.

At the church on the outskirts of the city, a Priest cut a connection to a familiar and leaned back to ponder the situation.

Walking away from the school building, the Master of Berserker and her invisible Servant met up with her maids, who had been searching for her and who had made a straight line for the bounded field that had contained the Servant battles.

As it roamed the city in spirit form a spirit hungered for the conclusion of the battle it had just been in, delaying its return to its Master.

On a raised balcony, a smile crossed the face of the king who stared at the battlefield like it one stared at a rotten log that had just sprouted an orchid.









TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5


Glossary:

Split Sky (斷空): A bounded field in Earth's nomenclature, and a field enchantment in the Bureau's, Split Sky turns a relatively small section of the ground around Shirou into a powerful automatic defense that allows him to prepare spells with longer casting times. The spell is first prepared by Lotus Blade, and then applied to the ground by touching it with any part of the sword, usually the tip, and enchanting a section of the ground with a radius similar to Shirou's height.

The enchanted ground will then act independently from Shirou to defend him against attacks from all directions, even from above and below. Although it has a surprisingly low cost to cast (equivalent to C or B rank spells of the Mid Childa magic style), it has to be carefully tailored to the user or the enchantment will also attack the caster. For this reason, it is also useful as a trap spell, or an area denial one, as the spell be maintained indefinitely with a proper source of energy or half an hour, if it is not attacked.

Now onto the proper author’s note. It’s been months. If not a year. I began a Master’s in physics, which took a lot of the time I had been using to write, and several sections got rewritten at least a dozen times or got left untouched for weeks while I tried to imagine the best way of writing what I wanted to happen.

That said, I do plan to continue this fic, and I hope that the next chapter won’t take another year to publish. It will probably be at least a month, though.

Again, I hope that you come with me with your comments, suggestions, complaints and questions. Good bye!