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é“æŠ•å°„ç ²ã€ 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é“æŠ•å°„ç ²: A construction from é›»ç£æŠ•å°„ç ²: Railgun. Breaking it up lke this: é›»ç£: electromagnetic 投射: Throwing/launching, ç ²: cannon and substituting the Electromagnetism part for Swordmanship (kendo<->剣é“), 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.