{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies
Fate was let to run its course, and the War was won. For the sole remaining Master, however, all that was left was to awaken to a world of consequences. Welcome, Emiya Shirou, to the Loser's Bracket.
Contents
000: The Sum of All Evils <-- (this post)
001: Placement Examination <-- (this post)
002: Warm Welcome
.1: ACC $1,750,000
.2: Code Ninety-Nine
//
It had briefly crossed his mind at the beginning of the War that if the Grail could grant only one wish to one participant, even if all but one of the camps were defeated, there would still be no clear victor. If neither gave way to the other, the final contention would inevitably fall between Master and Servant.
At the time, he hadn't thought to spare planning toward any such eventuality -- but here at the end of things, it seemed in hindsight a mistake.
Bleeding from the wounds that Kotomine Kirei had inflicted in their final bout, Emiya Shirou was all that kept the King of Knights from obtaining her sole desire.
"You still hold one final Command Seal," said the blonde, approaching the base of the stairs. "Use it and the Grail will recognize your forfeit. It won't be enough to compel me from my goal."
Ignoring the protest of his limbs, Shirou hefted his weapon -- a replica of the nameless axe-sword that his sister's Servant had carried.
"Make that wish," he replied, brandishing the blade, "and you'll be turning your back on the tears and sacrifices of everyone who's ever walked beside you."
The girl ascended the granite steps, bringing to grip her own weapon in a flash of light.
"I've honestly enjoyed our time together these past weeks," she said. "It may be that along our misadventure, the threat of death and the ugliness of human malice were never far off, but with Rin and yourself as my companions, I could at least pretend for a time that weight of this sword was somehow worthwhile."
Across her armor, the scars left by the blades of the King of Heroes mended as if they never were.
"However, the World doesn't allow that fantasies persist," she continued. "This time, the cost of my hubris was no less than the lives of Tohsaka Rin and Illyasviel von Einzbern." Two meters below the top of the stairs, she stopped advancing and brought the sword to her fore in a double-handed grip. "In the end, all of those tears and sacrifices you speak of could have been avoided. They came of walking beside the king that bears as her regalia the light of destruction."
Shirou clenched his jaw. He had dared to hope otherwise, but it didn't seem that he would see a resolution without open conflict.
"It isn't my intention to hurt you," said Saber, "but if you refuse to stand down, don't expect that I'll hold back as much as I have."
At the summit of the Ten no Sakazuki, with his back toward the golden light of the Grail manifest, Shirou stood his ground.
Confidence had no bearing upon his choice. Having restored Avalon to its owner and losing in the process the capacity to successfully trace it, common sense dictated that if Shirou were to cross blades with Arturia Pendragon, his odds of emerging victorious were infinitesimally small. Even so, for her own sake, he was obligated to oppose her. He'd already failed too many people tonight.
"Once again, I will ask that you remove yourself, Shirou," Saber commanded.
"No," he replied. "Never."
Drawing her lips to a thin, displeased line, Saber brought her sword parallel to her waist and /charged/.
Shirou was only barely able to follow her with his eyes, but steadily maintaining his trace of Heracles' monstrous strength and agility, he cleanly blocked the initial wave of attacks -- a series of low slashes aimed at the sides of his legs. The sparks that flew of the exchange were his first indication that things weren't going quite as he anticipated.
The axe-sword borne by Heracles was for all of its extraordinary resilience no more than a slab of mundane stone, chipped to resemble a blade. Tracing a weapon absent of mystery took very little effort or prana on Shirou's part, but accordingly the end-product was at a distinct structural disadvantage in a match against virtually any weapon of superior rank.
At the fifth clash, the axe-sword shattered, and the tip of the Excalibur cut across the side of Shirou's abdomen as he attempted to sidestep. Gasping, Shirou tossed the remnants of the blade at Saber and retreated, tracing out two of the axe-blade replicas he'd mentally loaded.
Saber, who had broken her offensive to evade, was forced yet again to the stairs as Shirou swung and let fly his replacements. Unlike Archer, he hadn't the skill to significantly modify traced objects on demand, but while the axe-blade was obviously unintended for flight, it was aerodynamic enough to stay aloft for a few seconds if thrown in the manner of a boomerang. It bought him just enough breathing space to consecutively load and reproduce further duplicates for use as projectiles.
A few more backwards leaps placed Saber at a great enough distance that the blades he threw could no longer reach her with any accuracy. Taking a more reserved stance, she resumed her approach at slower pace, striking and shattering each of the blades that neared her.
"The shared hope of humanity is unending victory," said Saber, climbing past the stone debris left in her wake. "As a race, we are united in our wish for the unequivocal annihilation of any who would oppose us."
Releasing a stream of prana with a slash of her sword, she simultaneously destroyed every airborne projectile.
"The sword I carry was forged of the crystallization of such a dream," she said with palpable disgust. "So unreasonable an existence should have never been let to arbitrate the matters of the waking world."
Breathing hard, Shirou ended his barrage and crossed the remaining pair of axe-blades before his legs. Saber was waiting him out, he knew. With Avalon sustaining her, she had more than enough prana to engage the Excalibur in full and escape the collapse of the cavern untouched. Had she truly intended to do him any lasting harm, he wouldn't have still been standing.
"Something good must have happened along the way," he insisted. "In all these years that you've fought and struggled, you must've achieved something worth smiling about."
"The crimes I've perpetrated against my own render meaningless whatever good that I've committed," Saber declared, once more lowering her stance.
By inexperience or straight-up fatigue, Shirou misjudged the shift in the blonde's footing as a lead-in to an oncoming charge. It was a moment before he understood his error, and by then, the aerial distortion loosed from Saber's vertical cleave had blown its way past his head. The abrupt, splitting pain in his left eardrum broke his guard, and it was all he could do to roughly toss the trio of rubies in his pocket in Saber's general direction.
"Kephath!" he shouted.
Where the jewels had fallen, wiry blood-red tendrils burst forth and extended vine-like, rapidly constricting Saber's armored limbs. Though the crystalline fibers were delicate of appearance, they enclosed a field of plunder whose function it was to supply prana from within to the thaumaturgical reinforcement of the crystalline matrix. The result was a solid lattice with sufficient strength to withstand over a metric ton of force per centimeter of ruby filament.
"Jewel magecraft," she observed. "You've managed to absorb some of Rin's instruction, it seems."
A concussive pressure rushed from Saber's body without premonition, splintering her bindings to minute fragments. Already disoriented and unstable of footing, Shirou dropped his weapons and stumbled backwards.
"It will be of no aid," said Saber, shortening the distance between them at a slow, deliberate pace. "Before the merciless machinery of reality, the effort and skills of any one human are of inconsequential weight."
In a movement too fast for Shirou to dodge, Saber brought her blade downwards in a diagonal cut to his torso. It was a shallow attack that wouldn't have inflicted lethal damage, but unwilling to risk the chance of incapacitation, Shirou blocked the sword with his right arm, releasing within the bounds of his own skin the highest quality blades he could trace on so short a notice.
"Why can you not comprehend futility?" asked Saber, applying pressure to the blade. "These injuries that I've dealt to you are needless."
"You take the good with the bad, but you never stop hoping," Shirou replied, gritting his teeth at the progressive tearing of his muscles. "Isn't that just how life is?"
Saber jerked and withdrew Excalibur from Shirou's forearm. Delivering a swift horizontal slice through the surface of his abdominal muscles, she cleansed her blade with a flick and watched him collapse to his knees.
The fight was at an end, Shirou knew -- but for good or naught, there was still one final trump to be played.
"By this Command Seal," he said, painfully lifting his bloodied left fist, "I order that you destroy the Grail."
The brand on the back of his hand was consumed in a flare of crimson light, and Saber visibly flinched -- not so much as to disrupt her stance, but she furrowed her brow as if giving intense focus to some private crisis.
"Your father concluded the Fourth Heaven's Feel with those same words," she said softly, closing her eyes. "I admonished you of the probable outcome."
Above them, at the brilliance of the noonday sun, the illusion of the Lesser Grail issued a single pulse of light and began its descent -- drifting slowly until it was level to Saber's diaphragm, at arm's reach. Calmly, and with an expression that might have been of love or remorse, the blonde met Shirou's gaze.
"Don't," warned Shirou, breathing unsteadily.
Saber shook her head and reached at the phantasm, cupping at the base of the bowl. At contact, the surface of the Grail rippled like water.
"To the Holy Grail," she declared, voice resolute, "I ask that Emiya Shirou bears witness to a history in which the Sword of Contract was never drawn by Arturia Pendragon."
Fate had run its course, and the War was won -- but for Emiya Shirou, there was no victory to be had; no understanding to be reached.
From where the shining, golden Grail rested in his field of vision, a pure white darkness burned outwards ...
//
In his first, tentative moments of consciousness, he arrived at the dim awareness that wherever he was, it was uncomfortably bright. Beneath his back, there was a soft, warm surface that might have been a bed or a futon, and somebody was lightly patting at his face in an annoying, repetitive motion.
"Oi," said a girlish voice. "Wake up already, Emiya."
Shirou parted his eyes to a reluctant squint and took in what he could of his surroundings.
He was in an infirmary of some sort -- a spacious, whitewashed room in functional faux-Victorian decor. The beds in array about him were made and vacant, and the only other person presently in sight was a bleach-blond, effeminate-looking Caucasian teen in a boy's student uniform -- presumably the one who had roused him.
'Saber?' he thought. 'No, but there's a definite resemblance ...'
"You don't get your ass outta bed right this moment, we're gonna be late for the System Scan," said the teen, slapping Shirou's face with a little extra force.
"Sys- ... System Scan?" mumbled Shirou, moving his face from the teen's reach and drawing himself upright.
"Hello? The general Power Development examination?" said the teen impatiently. "Like, we only ever take it every trimester or so. Ringin' any bells in there?"
It wasn't familiar, no -- but with mounting panic, Shirou realized that neither was anything else about the situation. Where was Saber? What had happened to the Grail? The last he recalled, he had been in the catacombs beneath Mount Enzou, facing his Servant in the final minutes of the War ...
Oh.
Oh lords.
"Snap the hell out of it, Emiya!"
Brimming over with impatience, the teen entered Shirou's personal space without reservation, stepping on to the bed and pulling him into a tight, uncomfortable choke-hold.
"Y- yield," sputtered Shirou, tapping at the teen's arm.
"Not until you swear that you ain't gonna be a bother no more," came the reply. "I ain't the acting class rep outta the goodness of my heart, you know?"
"I swear!"
"Good," said the teen, smirking in satisfaction. "Now let's get goin' already."
//
By the time Shirou had somewhat regained his bearings, he'd been trailing behind the smaller teen for several minutes -- traversing the corridors and skybridges of a rather upscale academic institution.
Stepping aside to avoid a fancy janitorial robot as they rounded a corner, he nodded unconsciously at the machine with ingrained politeness, staring after it.
'Even a fairly well-off private academy like Homurahara wouldn't be able to afford anything so cutting-edge,' he thought. 'Just how expensive is this place?'
"So what is it with the passing out in class all of a sudden?" asked the blond conversationally. "That mysterious girlfriend of yours keepin' you up at night, or what?"
Girlfriend?
He had a girlfriend? Since when?
Shirou opened his mouth, but closed it again, thinking the better of his gut response.
"Nah, nothing like that," he said. "I've just been having trouble sleeping lately. Might be the weather."
The blond seemed unimpressed with the answer, and paused to fix Shirou with a half-lidded glare.
"Nap if you wanna nap, but don't be pulling this kinda stunt again while I'm on duty. If you've got health issues that are interferin' with your class conduct, that's something you should be taking up with Medical Services. The city ain't providing free, full coverage student health care for you not to use it."
Shirou nodded absently, but didn't reply. He hadn't been aware that Fuyuki provided any such subsidy -- but not having been prone to sickness or injury growing up, he'd left any arrangements of insurance entirely to the whims of Fujimura Taiga and her grandfather. For all that free coverage sounded too good to be true, it could very well have merely been something he'd never bothered to become informed about.
Given, of course, that this was indeed Fuyuki City.
He wanted to say that he was somewhere within the municipality of Shinto, but the cityscape beyond the tall-paned windows happened not to contain any recognizable landmarks. The fact of the absence didn't mean a whole lot, necessarily, but for the time being, there was no way to tell exactly where it was that he'd been transported -- or what precisely had occurred since he was last conscious.
Despite the loss of Avalon, there were no obvious traces of the injuries that he'd sustained, and somebody had apparently put in the time and effort to dress him in the same uniform as his companion -- a white, short-sleeved button-up and a slightly worn pair of black slacks.
'Saber makes a wish, and now I'm somehow a student in an academy for the children of the elite?' he thought. 'Is that how things work out?'
Of all the outlandish things that Shirou had experienced these past weeks, it was this abrupt plunge into an unfamiliar everyday that most lacked the weight of reality. Consequence or punishment he was ready to accept, but the circumstance now presenting itself seemed thus far almost a reward for failing to come to terms with Saber. Frankly, it had him holding his breath for the other shoe to drop.
"Eight minutes late," announced the blond, glancing at the clock on the wall as they pushed into the third-floor lobby of a gymnasium from its balcony walkway. "Homeroom's gonna have my head for this shit."
The floorspace of the lobby opened into a massive indoor arena, complete with what Shirou guessed to be a four-hundred meter track. The sheer scale of the facility was a fair ways over-the-top for a sports education building at a secondary school, but it was something else entirely that caught Shirou's attention.
Several meters above the floor a short distance into the arena, a girl suspended in the air zipped narrowly from the path of a high-speed jet of water, deftly maneuvering as multiple streams arched past her. Further on, a bulky, muscular boy skated along the synthetic rubber flooring as if it had all the surface properties of ice.
These weren't isolated aberrations. Across the gymnasium -- as far as Shirou could see -- uniformed teenagers were engaged in the unreserved exhibition of what he could only tentatively categorize as 'magecraft.' It didn't seem as if the participants in the grand spectacle were particularly concerned with the preservation of the Masquerade.
More strikingly, though structural grasp vaguely indicated the operation of assorted mysteries, Shirou couldn't detect any obvious expenditure of prana in his immediate vicinity.
'Where the hell have you landed me, Saber?'
~// Chapter Separator //~
{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies
001: Placement Examination
//
"Coffee?"
The woman in the wheelchair shook her head, and waved off the offer.
"Given up on caffeine for the month," she replied. "I've been having trouble falling asleep at night these last few weeks."
The young man holding the coffee tsked, lowering the cup to the table before seating himself beside the woman at the control terminal.
"If it isn't an issue with your implants, it's probably the fact that your metabolism's aging," he said. "It isn't too soon to start saving up for retirement, you know."
"I'm twenty-eight, you jackass."
"Practically a dinosaur, in other words."
The woman didn't deign to provide a retort. Giving the young man a final glare, she turned her eyes back to the digital displays that lined the wall.
There were a total of thirty-two screens in the security room -- enough to cover all of the outdoor CCTV cameras in the western half of the school campus. For the purposes of the System Scan today, however, the feeds that were connected came of the monitoring equipment inside the gymnasium, and they were focused on a single subject -- a redheaded boy with golden eyes.
"You said on the phone that there's been some sort of disruption to his AIM profile?" asked the woman. "What changed, exactly?"
"Besides that he's running a slight fever? See for yourself."
Haphazardly, the young man tossed a manila folder to the woman, who opened it to the top page of the document within -- a color print-out of two three-dimensional spectrograms.
"Last time we got him on record was two weeks ago," said the young man. "Today, it's like he's a whole different person altogether."
The woman frowned in contemplation, flipping through the attached logs of the boy's recent medical data. Analysis of an esper's AIM field was the highest fidelity imaging available for the human psyche outside of a university budget -- coming short versus the more sophisticated procedures primarily in its insensitivity to illness and day-to-day psychological disturbances. Being that in this case, there didn't seem to be evidence of overt mental manipulation or significant trauma, there was no reasonable explanation for the stark disparity she was seeing between the two sets of readings.
Somehow, the tell-tale indications of Academy City's Power Development conditioning were now all but missing from Emiya Shirou's AIM profile.
"We've got a fifty-third confirmed Gemstone on our hands, in other words?" she asked.
The man shrugged.
"Honestly, I have no idea if he qualifies," he said. "Higher-ups asked me to confirm the situation when the readings came in thirty minutes ago. I just figured that since you have a personal stake in the boy, I'd give you a ring."
"And knowing you, you want a favor for the head's up," the woman observed. "If it's direct access to the Reformatory like you've been gunning for recently, this isn't nearly enough. Register me as a permanent consultant to the case, and you've got yourself a deal."
"Done," the young man replied, grinning.
Leaning against the back of her wheelchair and supporting an elbow on its armrest, the woman brushed the tips of her fingers horizontally across her lips.
"Let's see how our little spy performs in his practicals."
//
"This one?" asked the greying proctor, holding the back side of a clairvoyance card level to Shirou's eyes.
"A yellow star," Shirou replied.
A new card was drawn from the deck on the table between them.
"And this?" the proctor asked.
"A black arrow."
"Direction?"
"Up."
The proctor smiled. Returning the card to the deck, he penned a series of notes on a thin, transparent device that Shirou presumed to be a high-end tablet.
"You're doing very well, Mister Emiya," said the man, placing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. "Seventy-five out of seventy-five, with an improvement of thirty-eight points since last trimester. A one hundred percent accuracy is just about enough for you to qualify for a reevaluation of Level. Good job."
"Uh, thank you, sir," said Shirou sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have cheated so obviously with Structural Grasp.
"As soon as janitorial staff clears out a bit of floor-space in the Arena, you should be up for practicals," said the proctor. "We'll call you over when it's your turn. In the meantime, you can take a break in the waiting area down the hall."
Nodding, Shirou gathered his uniform jacket from the left booth divider and took his leave.
'Espers,' he thought, exiting into the hall from the long, windowed gallery.
In her long-winded lectures on thaumaturgical theory, Rin had touched on them once or twice -- warningly describing them as alien individuals who by nature 'strayed fundamentally from the common sense of man.' Per the irregularity of their interaction with the World, they held the ability to impose their perceptions upon an environment at no cost beyond mental exertion.
The scientists here hadn't uncovered knowledge of magecraft or the Masquerade, but there apparently existed an entire field dedicated to the study of psychic talents. That mysteries were subject to widespread academic scrutiny wasn't something that Shirou had known of -- but then again, it did seem like the sort of esoteric science that a typical teenager wouldn't normally run across.
Being a student registered to 'Tachikawa Secondary,' on the other hand, Shirou was expected to be an esper of at least 'Level Three' or higher. It put him into the difficult position of having to match up to an entirely guesstimated standard.
As his use of magecraft hadn't thus far raised any eyebrows, Shirou presumed that in all probability the scientists didn't possess the means to tell him apart from an actual esper. Ad-libbing his way through the exams was doable, in other words -- but other than what he could comprehend of his fellow students' abilities via structural grasp, he had no reference from which to self-assess over- or underperformance. It was all he could do to grasp about in the dark.
Sitting himself in the deserted resting area, Shirou sighed.
'No use worrying,' he thought. 'Even if the results don't follow the expectations of the school, there's nothing I can do about it. Best option's just to play along until I have a clearer picture of what's going on.'
But there really were too many pieces of missing information. The more he saw of the school, the less certain he was that he was still within the bounds of Fuyuki -- and unfortunately, confirmation of locale was precisely the sort of thing that he wasn't likely to glean from bits and pieces of overheard conversation.
Wherever the school was situated, he'd lived here for at least half a year -- and Saber's wish had on his behalf fabricated an entire life history that he couldn't remember. It was probably a contrivance on the part of the Grail that he conveniently bore a surface resemblance to the 'Emiya Shirou' known to his teachers and peers here at Tachikawa.
'I suppose this is what having amnesia is like?' he wondered, staring at the floor. 'Hopefully I didn't actually exchange places with another me ...'
"Emiya."
With a rather dour expression, the class representative approached from down the hall -- plopping down two seats to Shirou's right and crossing ankle over knee with exaggerated masculinity.
"Since yer here waitin', I'm guessin' you just got the one exam left?"
It didn't sound as if there was any doubt regarding Shirou's probable reply. By the lack of preamble and the annoyance in the tone, he guessed that despite the play at being friendly, the blond wasn't all too amused to find him here.
"Seems so," Shirou confirmed, frowning. "Not really looking forward to it."
"How come?"
Because the so-called 'practicals' involved teenagers wielding possibly lethal mysteries in live combat?
"If I'm going up against a possibility of grievous bodily harm," said Shirou, "I'd hope that it's for a better purpose than 'because the school expects it.'" He paused. "Isn't this whole thing kinda biased against students whose abilities can't be used for fighting?"
It occurred only after he'd spoken that in questioning the premise of the exam, he was perhaps 'breaking character.' For all he knew, training psychic abilities toward combat application was to anyone who had willingly enrolled in the academy merely a norm to be accepted and observed.
Thankfully, the class rep didn't look at him oddly.
"Can't be helped," came the reply. "You wouldn't know about this, but the 'exhibition fight' is really a pretty recent addition. Got introduced at Tachikawa the year before you transferred in 'cuz we were losin' out to Nagatenjouki and Tokiwadai in average ranking. The theory is, it gives kids the motivation to push harder."
"By dangling the threat of injury in front of them?"
"Worst comes to worst, they switch on the AIM Jammers in the floor. Instantly blocks out ability use within the zone."
"And if they don't turn it on in time?" asked Shirou.
"Then the school pays up." Pulling out a device that resembled a smartphone, the blond brought a page of text to the screen and held it up for Shirou to see. "It's right in the fine print o' student contract they make us sign. You waive the right to pursue legal damages for any injuries you receive as a result o' school activities. In exchange, Tachikawa and Student Medical Services jointly agree ta' compensate you in full fer inconveniences and required medical attention."
Somehow, this all wasn't very reassuring. Shirou could comprehend monetary payouts for a broken bone or limb, but what sort of compensation could a private school offer for a permanent brain or spinal injury? And in the first place, why put students at risk? Didn't the academy have a reputation to worry about?
A jingle played across the intercom, interrupting his line of thought.
"Emiya Shirou and Morg M. Harway," said a woman's voice. "Please report to Zone Eight of the third floor Multipurpose Arena for your practicals."
The class rep sighed, getting up and stretching.
"We were the last ones in, so it only makes sense that they paired us off. Somehow I knew it'd turn out like this."
"We're up, I guess?" asked Shirou, standing to his feet.
The blond nodded tiredly.
"Didn't wanna hafta beat you up, but you can consider this payback for the chewing out that bitch Saotome gave me earlier."
Shirou chuckled nervously.
//
Waiting on the square mat at the north-eastern corner of the arena was a short woman with glasses and a ponytail. By her height and bearing alone, it was difficult for Shirou to imagine that she was a teacher -- much less that she'd passed the age of majority.
"Er, Morg M. Harway and Emiya Shirou?" she asked, thumbing across the screen of her clipboard tablet.
"Yeah, that's us," Morg replied, answering for the both of them.
"My name is Tessou Tsuzuri, and I'll be your proctor for your final examination today." Indicating the two white X's taped to the mat with her free hand, she said, "If you'll just take your positions, I'll begin explaining the contents of the exam."
Shirou and Morg did as she asked, stepping up to the X's. Seeing them in place, Ms. Tessou nodded.
"The purpose of this exhibition match is to establish the current performance parameters of your abilities in practical application," she said. "You're not fighting to determine who's stronger or weaker, in other words, so please don't treat this as some sort of ranking bout. I'll terminate the exam either when the system indicates that sufficient data has been recorded, or when it acknowledges consenting forfeit or inability to continue. Actions that may inflict serious injury are strictly prohibited, and will result in exam abortion and disciplinary measures. Any questions?"
Shirou would've wanted a clarification on what precisely constituted a 'serious injury,' but figuring that it was probably whatever qualified under common sense, he shook his head. Across the mat, he saw Morg do the same.
"In that case," said Ms. Tessou, raising her hand, "begin!"
At the fall of her arm, Harway burst forward with a lunging thrust of the fist.
The smaller teen was a long ways off from the agility of a Servant, but the attack was nevertheless fast enough that Shirou had to reinforce his legs to dodge. His evasion, though, placed him neatly in the path of the followup -- a high roundhouse kick, issued with more force than Harway's musculature seemed to permit.
'Reinforcement?' guessed Shirou, blocking with his right arm. 'No ...'
Retracting the kick, Harway dropped fluidly into a low stance, sweeping at Shirou's feet with the opposite leg. Seeing the approach, Shirou backstepped out of range.
"Huh," said the blond. "When'd you get so good?"
"Uh ... I've been practicing?" asked Shirou, warily circling at a distance.
A bit more attention to the blond's physiology revealed that the unusual strength and speed weren't directly a consequence of any esper ability. Rather, by way of nearly inhuman focus, the tensile limits of all muscular groups were being forcibly exceeded -- a feat that likely took years of training to achieve, nigh unattainable without some degree of insensitivity to pain.
As with other psychic abilities that Shirou had attempted to read in the hours preceding, the mystery inherent to Harway's conceptual existence registered as an intense, vaguely-defined impression of an alien truth. The associated physical phenomenon was straightforward enough, though: In the aftermath of a movement, there was a rapid reversal of any tissue damage or acidic build-up.
"... accelerated healing?" asked Shirou aloud, taking the brunt of a fierce right hook to his forearms. "Is that what you have?"
Breaking off, Harway backed away and laughed.
"Only took you two trimesters ta' guess." The blond assumed a ready stance that reminded Shirou of Jeet Kun Do. "Still, pretty good, seein' as I don't exactly advertise. Healing's part of the gig, yeah, but don't be thinking that I'm a one-trick pony like those brats with Auto-Rebirth."
Shirou frowned. Going on the thought that Olympic-class athletics would be more than enough to destroy the opposition, he'd fully intended to get the fight over with on reinforcement alone -- conditions for exam completion notwithstanding.
Once again, it seemed that he'd overestimated himself.
Against an opponent with costless regeneration and physical capabilities just about level to his own, blindly entering a competition of endurance would earn him nothing but injury -- maybe incapacitating him for a more in-depth investigation of his circumstances once the exams were through. By comparison, ingrained paranoia that a fuller reveal of his magecraft might invite unspecified dangers was a concern of far lower priority.
In a breath, a pair of blunt wooden blades were chambered and fired -- imposed from within Shirou's mind unto the domain of Gaia.
"'bout time," said the blond, smirking. "Thought fer a moment you were gonna stall this thing inta' next week."
Shirou's reply was a forward crosscut that he'd seen Archer perform a number of times with the Kanshou and Bakuya. The first set of swings weren't quick enough to catch Harway off-guard, but the greater reach of the weapons did effectively deprive the smaller teen of any clean openings to exploit. Making the best of his temporary advantage, Shirou pressed forth with a second attempt.
This time, though, there was no evasion. Delicate fingers enclosed Shirou's right blade -- and as if the traced weapon were comprised of so much butter, the wood somehow gave way, melting fluid-like beneath the pressure of Harway's grip.
'Negation ... ?' thought Shirou.
The top half of the weapon fell away. Too surprised to immediately disengage, Shirou could only watch as another clawing swipe destroyed his left blade -- leaving the front of his torso undefended. A forceful open-hand strike to his stomach sent him sprawling across the floormat.
Harway didn't close in for a finisher.
"You're right that the practicals don't favor the kids that can't fight," said the smaller teen, dropping back into a ready stance. "But you know, at any Level higher than Three, yer essentially bein' ranked fer your viability as a military instrument."
Clutching his stomach as he stood, Shirou grit his teeth. Military viability? At the end of the day, were the students here nothing more than tools at the disposal of some shadowy power-monger?
Saber had wished for him to witness a history in which she was never king. It stood to reason that the Grail had deposited him here and now for some specific purpose -- maybe to come to terms with the sort of world that she desired, as he'd never truly gone the distance to understand her in their time together.
If this were the world came of her absence, though ...
"Doesn't mean I have to like it," Shirou replied aloud.
In a conflict of two mysteries, quantifiable power had little meaning. Inevitably, whichever fell closer to the common sense of man would be overturned -- and so, as the World rejected phantasmal existences, Shirou's tracings had worn away to the attrition of Harway's distortion. The practice blades used by the Homurabara Kendo Team were, after all, merely mundane objects.
The same couldn't be said for the bamboo blade that now rested within Shirou's hands.
The Tora Shinai strayed from the pigeonholing of 'common sense.' For all that the opacity of its history within his mind denied a perfect reproduction, even the very flawed replica before him was able to slip its suggestions through the boundaries of his mind in a reasonable semblance of his own instinct.
Riding on said 'instinct,' Shirou found himself again on the offensive -- adopting the sort of hopping advance that Fujimura Taiga typically employed in casual sparring.
"Face!" he shouted, thrusting the shinai at his opponent's head.
Before Shirou connected, the smaller teen's left hand shot up, batting catlike at the weapon's tip. The attack veered ineffectually into empty air -- but on recognition that the shinai had somehow resisted erosion, an expression of shock settled on Harway's face.
The small window of distraction was all that the Tora Shinai needed. Withdrawing in the middle of follow-through, the weapon circled back and rammed its full weight against the blond's upper right arm. One hundred and twenty centimeters of carved bamboo didn't constitute an insignificant mass. Something had to give -- and the inertia alone was sufficient to knock the smaller teen to the floormat.
Reigning in the shinai's ferocity, Shirou halted the blunt of the tip on the skin of Harway's throat.
"Yield?" he asked.
For several seconds, Harway sat, merely glaring at the Tora Shinai as if it were some offensive existence. Then, relenting, the blond nodded.
"Yield."
//
"AIM intensity at seventy-two point five," said the young man, reading off the screen before him. "One standard deviation above the population mean for Level Fours, hm? Explains how he overwhelmed Harway's Jurisdiction Assert."
Beside him, the normally kindly countenance of the woman in the wheelchair had twisted into a smirk of perverse excitement. Drawing a mobile phone from the pocket of her pajamas, she dialed a number.
The line connected in three ringbacks, and a man's voice greeted her.
[Kihara Byouri,] said the person on the other end. [I don't recall giving you permission to so casually dial this number. Do you yet again require patronage for some crude endeavor of yours?]
"You really shouldn't think so poorly of me, Director," Byouri replied. "It's not as if I make a habit of begging for grants."
[Then what is it that you want?]
"Free reign over the fate of the organization known as RAVENS," she said.
The line went quiet, and Byouri's smirk grew wider.
[If such a body exists, I have no knowledge of it,] said the man. [Feel free to do as you please.]
The call was instantly terminated, but Byouri pocketed her phone with a satisfied expression. From behind the security room's control panel, her companion gaped.
"That was Pieceman?" he asked.
"Yeah."
The younger man sighed, pressing his palm against his face.
"One of these days, you're seriously gonna get burned," he said. "Doesn't do anything for your life expectancy to go ahead and blackmail a member of the Board of Directors, you know?"
"I've associated enough with the man that I doubt he really minds," said Byouri. "Besides, I've long since given up any hope of actually meeting my life expectancy."
Again, she fixed her gaze upon the face of Emiya Shirou, displayed from every angle across the wall of screens.
"Whatever it is that you've come to this city for," she said, "I'll make you give it up as well."
Her lips drew into a toothy smile entirely at odds with her features.
"I swear it on my name as a Kihara."
//
"Say, Uiharu," said a certain middle school girl. "Have you heard that one rumor about the body-snatchers secretly taking over the city?"
//
Subject: Emiya Shirou
Age: 16
Designation: Tactile Image
Rank: Level 3
AIM Range: 5 meters
Precognition: A
Clairvoyance: A
Psychometry: B
Telepathy: D
Psychokinesis: C
Retrocognition: C
The subject is able to impose limited influence over the force interactions of air molecules. Primarily, visible-range photon reflectivity and intermolecular forces are manipulated to temporarily produce ability-maintained solids. Tactile Image may be classified as a subset or variant of the more common ability known as [Aero Hand].
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Originally Posted by Tobias
