Is it possible to reason with monsters?
RIN // December 5th, 2007
Solstice Reverse: A meteorological anomaly that manifested at random intervals in the region around Misaki, Japan, wherein unexplained atmospheric distortions resulted in temperatures upwards of thirty-six degrees Celsius at the height of winter. The strange phenomenon was in fact a byproduct of a periodic increase in the spiritual proximity of the Moon, focused to the city by the presence of the White Princess of the True Ancestors, who slumbered deep within the earth below.
In 1871, the Princess had become the final vessel of the entity known as Type-Moon -- an extraterrestrial intelligence that served as the primary agent to the mandates of the counter force of Luna.
The occurrence of the Solstice Reverse enabled the undertaking of a procedure to extract from the mind of Type-Moon the knowledge of one's desire -- a recurring ritual called the "Phantasmal Summer," wherein, granted lower-order access of the Moon's memories, participants could summon forth figures of legendary stature as proxies in a tournament to the death; a "War."
It was not by the now-lost 3rd Magic that these Heroic Spirits were materialized. Rather, their forms were comprised of etherlite weaves, fabricated via a technique supplied by the House Eltnam.
The nature of the Servants' manifestation prevented them from expressing more than a small fraction of the strength they held in life, but as their every action was now realized through alchemical modulation, their Masters could impose a limited number of absolute overrides upon their autonomy -- "Command Seals," which upon expenditure forced a Servant to comply perfectly with the intent of a verbalized command. Since the 3rd War, this feature had been a staple of the system.
//
Or at least, this was true as far as Tohsaka Rin could determine from the records kept by her family.
The House Tohsaka was one of the three sponsors of the War, and thus maintained highly detailed records of relevant occurrences. Of the first two Phantasmal Summers, however, archived information was irregularly scant -- possibly censored for reasons unknown to Rin.
She sighed and closed thick, leatherbound tome before her, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Placing the book back into the shelf, she glared at the presently defunct air conditioner behind her father's old maplewood desk.
In the three days since she had arrived, the machine had randomly stopped functioning more than four times, and she hadn't been able to get consistently cold air out of it despite hours of messing with the controls. Airing out the room hadn't helped much with the muggy heat, and she was somewhat fearful that the humidity outdoors would fill the rare manuscripts in the study with splotches of mildew.
"Bastard priest should be back from Italy in a few days," she muttered, thinking aloud as she closed the windows. "I'll get him to install a new one when he arrives. Should be ready in time for the War."
Exiting, Rin reengaged the study's defenses as she locked the door; a glowing formalcraft flashed briefly across the wooden surface at the door's center. It was doubtful that an infiltrator would be to bypass the layered bounded field at the limits of the property, but Misaki was theoretically enemy territory, and it couldn't hurt to be cautious.
The city of Misaki was built upon a spiritual territory traditionally beyond the jurisdiction of the Magecraft Association. Since the sixteen hundreds, it had been under the administration of the House Tohno, a clan of demon hunters. Being highly capable in their chosen trade, the Tohno were quick to terminate any unauthorized supernatural activity within their domain. Needless to say, they had been entangled in the history of the Phantasmal Summers since the beginning.
Of what information Rin could gather regarding the 1st War, one clear fact emerged: It was nothing that could be described as a competition or tournament.
Seven Servants had been summoned, but rather than being set against one another as was later customary, they were imposed with the singular purpose of eliminating one man -- Tohno Shiki, the 7th Generation Head of the House Tohno.
It was an execution all but in name -- a death-trap designed on the certainty that no living human of the modern era could ever hope to defeat a Heroic Spirit in direct confrontation. The outcome, however, proved otherwise.
By means unrecorded (or removed from the archives?), the Tohno patriarch had effortlessly massacred the Servants, emerging from the encounter utterly unscathed. To Tohsaka Rin, who had spent ten years familiarizing herself with the theoretical capabilities of Servants, such an act was nothing short of monstrous -- not because it was necessarily evil, but because she couldn't comprehend how such an unreasonable victory could've come to pass in the first place.
Perhaps the mistake had been in presuming Tohno to be human? Several of the documents in the archive had mentioned rumors that the family had interbred with the fiendish-kind sometime in the Edo period. If this were true, was the massacre an exercise of literally inhuman power?
'Human or not, Father was somehow on friendly enough terms with the man to make deals with him,' she thought, pausing in the hallway before the bedroom she'd shared with her sister as a child. 'If I survive the War, I'll have to look into whether or not I can overturn that arrangement of theirs.'
//
The Tohno clan was not a lineage of magi.
Unlike the House Tohsaka, they had no real interest in reaching the Swirl of the Root. The sole purpose of their participation in the Phantasmal Summer was to permanently end its recurrence, and if not for fear of reprisal from the Magecraft Association, they might have long ago dismantled the Grand Ritual that arbitrated the tournament's automatic features.
To preempt any hostilities in the event of their success, they had negotiated a binding contract with Atlas and the Clock Tower: Should the House Tohno manage to bring about a cessation of the Solstice Reverse in the course of a War, the Association would act in perpetuity to prevent its members from seeking retribution. In exchange, the House Tohno would unconditionally permit the use of Misaki as the stage of the War.
However, after attaining another overwhelming victory in the 2nd War, Tohno Shiki and his clan had ceased to seriously participate. In the two subsequent Wars, he'd pursued his goals through progressively weaker proxies. Of the nature of the knowledge he'd managed to extract from Moon Cell, nobody knew a thing.
'If he's so strong, why doesn't he just steamroll the competition every War?' wondered Rin, staring out at the city skyline from a window seat on the overground rail. 'It can't be because he's gotten weaker in his old age, can it?'
It was a thought arrived at largely in jest; Rin was disinclined to place much stock in it. Tohno had been alive for roughly a century and a half, and appeared no older than fifty. Based on the observations of her familiars, his physical conditioning still far exceeded that of trained athletes.
Still, it was probable a fall-off in combat capability that placed him below the strength of the average Heroic Spirit wouldn't be detectable to an amateur such as herself. Such a circumstance could've very well prevented him from participating in the War per his original modus operandi.
'It isn't a very satisfying answer, though,' she thought, hugging her overnight bag to her abdomen. 'It feels more like ...'
"He became disillusioned with the War itself?"
//
As Rin neared her destination, thoughts of the War were driven from her mind by the biting cold of the air.
Kugamine University Hospital was a large medical facility in the suburbs, situated at the border of the domain of Misaki. As such, during the Solstice Reverse, the local temperatures tended to vary drastically based on fluctuations in the mana flow beneath the earth. Donning the coat and scarf she'd packed in her overnight bag, Rin stepped out on to soggy layer of snow that covered the pavement.
The four minute walk from the station was uneventful and unpleasantly icy; by the time she passed into the welcoming warmth of the hospital's central heating, she was berating herself for not thinking to bring along a longer skirt.
A senior member of the nursing staff greeted her when she arrived in the long term care ward.
"Good to see you again, Miss Tohsaka," said the plump woman, smiling.
Nodding politely, Rin said, "You too, Nurse Tanaka."
"Father Kotomine isn't with you this time?"
"He's overseas visiting his daughter right now. You'll probably have a chance to see him in the next few weeks, though."
Nurse Tanaka seemed slightly crestfallen at her response, but pushed onwards out of curiosity.
"He has a daughter?"
"From before he took his vows," clarified Rin. "I believe she's a few years older than me."
The nurse 'hmmed,' and smiled a bit dreamily as she pulled out the guest sign-in clipboard for Rin. Tanaka was a nice, helpful woman, but to Rin her obsession with the bastard priest was a bit disturbing. Anyone who found Kotomine Kirei attractive obviously didn't know him well enough.
When her business at the nurse's station was done and over with, Rin picked up her overnight bag and walked the final distance to the end of the hall -- the part of the journey that always seemed the longest. She didn't immediately enter when she reached the door. Instead, pressing her foreteeth against her lower lip, she knocked.
"Come in," said a woman's voice from within.
Exhaling, Rin pushed open the door and entered. The gaunt, green-haired woman seated on the bed slowly turned her eyes from the flurry of snow beyond the window and looked at Rin. It was a dreadfully vacant gaze -- a dreadfully vacant smile.
"Oh!" exclaimed the woman cheerfully. "Hello, Sakura."
Rin forced herself to smile.
"Hello, Mother."
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Originally Posted by Mike1984
