and fun times are had by all.
and fun times are had by all.
Teasing the Penguin God!
Hooray!
True!
Aoko and Ciel play really well off of each other.
And god, that's Hisui isn't it. ;_;
It's Hisui, yes.
Spoiler:
Poor meido T^T
So you keep SHIKI from getting stuck in a basement, only to turn him into an even more vicious bastard than canon, brutalizing Hisui in the process?
I don't know how to feel about this.
Poor Hisui indeed.
Everything was done for a reason, though. I'll assure you of that.
Spoiler:
Even...the will and heart?
*unleashes Tite Kubo's reality marble - The Heart*
Maybe.
Spoiler:
Maybe? I see...perhaps.
Thanks for the help. I had thought I had gotten rid of all the past tenses on my last pass. *gets those edited*
Spoiler:
I usually feel somewhat sorry for Tohno SHIKI, but thanks to your portrayal, Velsper, I can't wait for him to compare eyes with Shiki. Poor Hisui. She better not die, SHIKI, or I'll sic Arc on you.
On another note, I wish I Gauss' brain for when I'm writing, since I'm prone to making grammar mistakes.
IfRoaSHIKI killed Hisui, Kohaku's going to flip when she finds out. Or she might when she finds out her sister's dead. It's hard to tell, and she's never really been all that stable. This dog is an eyesore. This dog. This dog this dog this dog...
Is it really necessary to begin the leavetaking section with "The next day..."? You establish a timeframe with the next sentence, after all, and it'd be just as easy to say "The next day marked one week since..." etc.
Why do I get the feeling that those odd little comments, in the Wise-Up, are from the Shirou struck in the Grail? Also, I can assume that Aoko and Touko are more friendly to each other, right?
Anyway, awesome story you got here boss.
I'll drop the line out from ff.net and this.Originally Posted by ringlhach
Thanks for the help.
Glad to see someone caught the tone. That is Shirou in the Grail. Well, I"m still determining what Aoko and Touko's new relationship is like here. I just had Aoko not mentioning anything about stealing since it's kind of a messed up thing to tell a kid, really.
I'll be posting some stuff now.
Spoiler:
Stuff is good.
Disclaimer: Is there such a thing as emogar? *philsoraptor*
Presenting...
…
World 6, Variant 1, Past – Real Folks Blues
…
Fire baptized his birth into the world. Every night for the rest of his days, he dreamt of two things. One was a beautiful sword that nearly drove him to tears, and the other was a vast sea of flames. Both dreams had sunk so deeply into his very sense of self that they had obliterated any traces of what he might have become if left to his own devices.
Tonight...was one of the dreams of death.
Prayers and curses educated the young Shirou. His dreams began as they always did, with Shirou's broken and charred body stumbling away from his home. Sometimes he could see his mother waving at him through the windows. She most likely was begging for aid as the flames licked her flesh off her bones.
As always, Shirou would stumble away. His eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but he never allowed a single drop to fall.
Shirou's small body stumbled away from his burning home. From his personal hell he entered a more impersonal one. Towering flames raged on either side of his six year old self. Prayers and curses stabbed into his head from the individuals dying within the flames, but Shirou only knew one fundamental truth.
If he stopped for them – he would die.
This truth had been what had granted him the strength to walk away from his mother. It had been what kept him from shedding tears for his father. It would be enough to ignore the plights of the living. It was nearly enough to keep himself from facing the glassy eyes of the dead.
But the truth is a dangerous thing.
Shirou had been granted a boon, and an equal payment had to be made. His body, ruined as it was by the flames and smoke, would not provide the price requested. So the young boy freely sacrificed from his mind and heart. Every step across the broken land consumed a memory. Each stride past the flailing limbs of the people begging for Shirou's aid consumed an emotion.
An automaton of flesh and bone was all that remained when Shirou fell.
*****
"-Huh!?" Shirou squinted at the white light above him.
'So bright...' The boy groaned as he tried to turn. He was surprised to find himself in an unfamiliar bed and in an unfamiliar room. The room's cleanliness and bright white light lulled him into a state of acceptance, though.
'Where am I?' That thought is answered as Shirou could now hear faint moans and murmurs. There are many beds in the large room, and each is filled with a person who was hurt. The young boy could tell that no one ill here.
Each person he was seeing was someone who had been saved...
Shirou relaxed and let his eyes wander.
Outside a nearby window, the bright blue sky was unbelievably beautiful.
*****
The number of children in the beds around Shirou began to vanish as the days went on. Mostly joyful or tearful reunions would occur in front of him as family reunited. The remaining children would huddle back in their beds with faint looks of disgust or envy when they'd see those reunions, but Shirou remained stoic.
Eventually only sixteen of the children remained. Each of them was given an individual room at this point.
Shirou thought the adults looked vaguely guilty beneath their faces. Whenever they thought he was watching them, they donned plastic happiness over their expressions like a false mask.
The boy could only assume that the adults were trying to slowly work the thought in the children's heads that...
They'd be alone from now on.
Shirou took another sip of his broth through the straw he had been given for his juice. The redhaired boy left the noodles and juice alone as he simply continued to stare at nothing in particular. 'I wonder if they'll tell the others?' A sensation - like pins and needles - danced along his spine at the thought. Shirou shifted uncomfortably beneath his blankets in his clean room. 'We're all...alone now.' Guilt filled his heart.
The image of his mother wailed as she burned alive. She thrashed about in front of the window like an agitated snake before his eyes. Shirou's body thrummed as he jerked backwards, knee arcing up and smashing the bottom of the elevated table over his bed, sending the tray of food on it down on him.
The clattering sound of dishes echoed in the room along with his pained yelp as burning broth soaked him before the tray bounced off him and fell to the ground.
"You alright there?"
Shirou nearly jumped out of his skin. A scruffy looking brown haired man in a well beaten brown coat had somehow snuck into the room along with an amused looking physician. The doctor offered Shirou a faint smile before he picked up the medical chart at the foot of the bed.
The boy sighed at the wet gown clinging to his legs. He peeled the material off and shifted it a bit. The skin beneath Shirou's gown was only slightly pink from the heat of the broth.
"I'm okay." Shirou awkwardly replied.
The coated man nodded and moved out of the doctor's way. The physician approached the boy, and with a soft click of his tongue, he helped Shirou in peeling the stained blankets off the bed. The scruffy coated man helped by picking up the dropped dishes on the ground.
"It's still amazing how you bounce back so easily from things." The doctor mused with a shake of his head. Those words seemingly caused the coated man's face to alight with a hint of amusement.
The coated man moved closer to the bed and, with permission from the doctor, helped him and the Shirou in getting the mess cleaned up.
Shirou merely sat back against his bed in embarrassment once he had given what little aid he could. The doctor placed everything into a plastic pan for his medicine and gave the scruffy man a nod before carrying the pan out.
"I'll be back in a moment." The physician announced as he gave Shirou an encouraging smile before heading out of the room.
Shirou gave the remaining man a curious look.
"My name is Kiritsugu Emiya." The tired looking man announced.
"Uhm...my name is Shirou..." The redhead softly trailed off. Shirou grimaced and answered Kiritsugu's look of curiosity with a lost look. "...sorry, that's all I know." He glanced down at his hands, which were twiddling nervously over his lap.
Kiritsugu's expectant look faded into a neutral one. "No. I apologize." He shook his head, and offered Shirou a wan smile. "Still, that makes it more important that we talk now." Kiritsugu concluded authoritatively.
"What do you mean?" Shirou blinked. "...do you know who I am?" He hopefully wondered. Somehow he got the impression this man wasn't a relative. He hadn't acted like any of the other people had when they came to retrieve some of the others Shirou had stayed with.
"Sorry, but no."
"-oh."
Kiritsugu lightly scratched at the stubble on his cheeks and chin as he considered his next words. "Well...let me be blunt. Would you like to be adopted by me? Or would you like to go to the Orphanage with the other children that remain?" The man's words made Shirou stare at the older man in shock.
"...What?"
'Is this how this is supposed to go?' Shirou boggled at Kiritsugu's offer.
Kiritsugu paused for a moment. He seemingly realized the way his tone came off, and he quickly backpedalled. Kiritsugu shook his head from side to side as he raised his hands in an oddly defensive looking posture.
"Well...no, that's not how I meant it." Kiritsugu looked like he had bitten into a lemon. "I mean to say...uhm...I would really like to adopt you." He awkwardly shuffled his feet. Kiritsugu looked a bit dopey in the boy's eyes as he reached behind the back of his head and scratched at his short hair. "...if you don't mind, of course."
Shirou was conflicted. The man really didn't look very reliable. Like at all.
But he had chosen Shirou.
Besides, Kiritsugu looked pretty cool, in his own sloppy way, and Shirou's young heart somehow really admired that.
"...alright." Shirou's single word caused Kiritsugu's face to light up like Christmas came early. The redhead felt a warm sensation radiate through his chest in reaction to the older man's gentle smile. "Ah...can I call you dad?" Shirou tentatively wondered.
"Of course!" Kiritsugu grinned beatifically. Shirou's new father suddenly snapped his fingers, causing the boy to jump in bed slightly. "Oh! Before we get too far, I need to tell you something." His face was solemn. "I'm a sorcerer." That dopey look crossed Kiritsugu's face. "Keep it a secret, okay?" He held up a tiny pebble. On its surface, a glowing symbol was carved. Oddly enough, some faint purple light was glowing on the doorknob of Shirou's hospital room too.
"...what?"
Shirou Emiya would learn to take his new father's habit of bluntness in stride. Eventually.
*****
World 6, Variant 1, Future
…
Shirou Emiya slowly opened his eyes as he came out of his dream. The tall, dark skinned man with snow white hair and gray eyes wore a jet black set of armor and dark pants. Several parts of his outfit were torn – exposing swaths of bandages beneath, which were stained with blood at the moment.
The man's right eye was swollen and purple, but that didn't keep his other eye from taking in his surroundings with casual disregard. The execution site he woke up at would be the last thing he would ever see.
'May as well stop and smell the roses.'
Shirou stood upon a a crude wooden platform. It was raised high above a slowly growing crowd of nearly a hundred people in total. The wooden platform that he was going to be executed on today was in a ruined shopping plaza. A quick pass of the blasted out buildings showed no sign of movement or people within the few buildings that were still holding together.
Shirou relax. He couldn't feel any other presences besides that of the group that had now gathered. He moved on to study the people themselves. Several of them had swapped their frayed and patchwork clothing with outfits stripped away from the enemy nomads that had attacked. Shirou nodded to himself approvingly as he saw the leather armor and bits and pieces of metal and ceramic strapped onto the dozen fighters.
The crowd noted his approval. The majority of them frowned at him or shifted their weaponry – mainly knives and melee weapons, with a few positively ancient pieces of firearms from the before the bombings – threateningly in his direction. Some of the people that Shirou had the pleasure of working with gave him tired nods of acknowledgment.
"So, will you remain quiet until the end, Emiya?" A voice rang out over the din of the crowd. The group as a whole seemingly shifted tone at the arrival of a gray haired man. The group took on various expressions of contempt towards Shirou as a fifty year old man in a weathered, but still serviceable looking, powder blue suit spoke up. "We have evidence that you were conspiring with those devils across the valley. Just tell us what we need to know and we'll let you go." He finished at the same time he arrived at the wooden platform.
"They didn't do it." Shirou immediately tried to head off that line of thought. The last thing he wanted to do was make tension flare up in the valley after he died.
"The nomads couldn't have of gotten a hold of that bio-weapon without their help!" The politician shouted, nearly frothing at the mouth. His impassioned retort caused the crowd around him to grow more heated.
"You know as well as I do what they possess and don't possess." Shirou replied with a touch of heat in his own tone now. "You've confiscated my journals. They don't have any weapons at all!" The white haired man lightly bit his lip to keep from continuing in his tirade about the other community still having their own supplies that he had brought in.
Best not remind them of the real reason they were so desperate.
Shirou glanced up at the pitch red skies. Thick, jet black clouds of ash dotted the heavens. The chemicals within the noxious clouds had ravaged the community in front of him. They would all have died had he not intervened.
'Is this fine?' The voice of Rin Tohsaka buzzed in the back of his head. Her voice had been plaguing him for the last few years now. Shirou would have just passed it off as a charming bit of insanity, but she knew things. Oftentimes the voice of his old high school idol would tell him of things that lay ahead on his constant trips through the blasted wastelands.
Sometimes she answered if Shirou pressed her on details. He was pretty sure that bouts of insanity didn't respond with tangible bits of information. Like a dam, it seemed that Shirou's acknowledgment of the voice had granted it more power, and he was now constantly hounded. The white haired man had worried what it said about him that the woman's voice sounded more like her teenage self, though.
'You wished for me to give you the power to save them, but now you'll die at their hands.' Rin continued once he didn't reply. Much like the real Tohsaka, she sounded vaguely peeved whenever he took too long to talk to her. 'You're stupid, Emiya-kun.'
It was enough to make a grown man chuckle.
Shirou was still highly amused that The World acted so personable with him. 'That's fine.' He thought as he gazed at the crowd with an even gaze. The rickety old platform below his feet groaned as he shifted in place. An old fashioned noose drew tight against the skin of his neck with his motion. 'They don't know better. I showed off my power to save them, so they had every excuse to think I'm related to this.'
"Do you have any last words?"
Shirou was drawn out of his daze by the words of the politician.
'Now will you act?' Rin's voice was lightly curious. 'I have granted you more than enough power to survive this.' She paused. '...you could just break out.'
'No. It's fine.' Shirou smiled. The white haired man shifted in place a bit. 'Besides, you came after me for a reason, right?' He closed his eyes silently. 'This is just going to be an early start on my new mission.'
'...yes. Your abilities are unique. With your skill we will save mankind countless times over.' Rin promised. Relief flooded Shirou. With that assurance, the white haired magus opened his mouth to speak.
"...all of you, try to move to the south during the night. The enemy forces will not be able to follow you if you take the mountain path at this time of the year." Shirou freely offered the group his last words.
Murmurs of disbelief went up amongst the crowd. A few people glanced away guiltily. The politician scowled.
'I hope they take my advice...' Shirou thought.
'You ...confuse me.' Rin quietly admitted.
'Well, we'll always have eternity.'
"Goodbye, Emiya." The politician gestured. Shirou felt the platform beneath his feet shift and collapse...
*****
World 2, Variant 1, Past – You're Gonna Carry That Weight
…
Shirou found himself standing in the center of a dim living room when he next opened his eyes. He found himself dressed in his full set of black armor and red holy mantle. Both pieces of armor were fully repaired. The room he was standing in had expensive and western looking furniture surrounding Shirou.
"Ngh..." The white haired man raised his hands to his aching head. Shirou's brief moment of confusion transitioning between execution site and this mansion mixed with the increasingly painful headache he was suffering.
The white haired man clutched at his head for a few moments, but quickly realized something. His magic circuits were active and he was receiving a great amount of mana from his surroundings. With the frightening rush of power came knowledge as well. Yet the information was things that he already knew. Social customs and language; things he had known since he had been a boy.
The most important things were the geographical information and temporal location, though.
'Why am I in the past?!' The answer automatically came to Shirou. After his death, he had been summoned to compete in a War after he had died for an item called the Holy Grail. The man had been pulled back in time and space from the Throne of Heroes...
"I'm...a hero?" Data flooded his mind as he was given all the information on the role he was playing in this contest. Shirou would take on the mantle of Archer due to his abilities in life, which had been supplemented by his pact with Alaya.
'I...made it, father...' Shirou breathed in wonder. His hands trembled slightly as Shirou's gray eyes widened. 'I'm a Hero of Justice. I did it!' The white haired man felt something deep in his heart twitch in joy. He never felt as deep a connection to his father than he did at this exact moment.
'I...I need to do my best so my Master can win!' Shirou's eyes widened as he got the information from the Holy Grail on who his Master was going to be. 'Rin Tohsaka! Well, I'll help her win, then!' He nearly laughed through the slight burning sensation as the flow of mana tapered off as his new body's odic reserves were filled to their limit.
Shirou decided to check on one last thing before he went to greet his Master. Best make sure that his abilities weren't changed in the afterlife because of his deal with Alaya. So Shirou investigated his own Heroic Legend with a merry expression on his face.
The results that the Holy Grail provided...confused him.
'I...don't have one?' Shirou felt vaguely confused, but he saw that he was in the Throne of Heroes. A few prods with his mind explained that he was inside the Throne because of the deal itself, and not because of his deeds after dealing with Alaya.
Well, that made sense. He had been working after that point with her power. Shirou instead chose to have the Holy Grail show him if he had learned any new skills. Or refined his pre-existing ones with the new level of powers he possessed. That'd come in handy for this new War...
Thousands of images of himself mechanically overloading the swords and Noble Phantasms he was capable of creating hit him simultaneously. Shirou staggered back as he let out a gasp as two constants registered amongst all of those images that were appearing in his mind; the cold, blank expression on his face and that his swords were always turned in the direction of other humans.
'That...what's going on?' Shirou's expression – which had been joyous up until now, fell heavily. The Grail helpfully provided more images of his weapons raining cool and efficient death. While he could understand and even approve of his other self's usage of the tactics shown in all the encounters he saw; the disturbing lack of serenity kept hammering the same thought over and over in the back of Shirou's mind.
This...is wrong.
The automaton that was moving about with Shirou's face didn't ever break his steady pace. Maddened Magi fell as easily as young children. No blood was different once it coated the flashing swords created by the tanned man marching through countless battlefields. Shirou felt sick to his stomach every time a person begged for their lives on the rare occasions that his doppleganger dropped out of the invisible state he roved in normally.
Shirou grew dismayed with each village and town that were wiped from the face of the earth.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands – it didn't matter. They all met their end at Shirou's hand.
'You...lied to me.' His fists trembled at his sides – nails digging bleeding gouges from the soft flesh of his palms.
There were no smiling faces.
'YOU LIED TO ME, ALAYA!' Rage surged to life within Archer's very soul. The thought that he had been deceived because of Rin's voice burned at every fiber of his being.
Shirou felt his magic circuits flare to life as he allowed his body, granted to him by the Holy Grail, to hit its peak speed and strength. His vision turned red and he blurred as he descended on the living room like a tornado. At one point he was sure that he had created a sword to annihilate part of the roof as well, but he was too far gone to care as he raged in a combination of grief and shame.
By the time the red haze cleared Shirou's eyes, he had two goals in mind. The first was to do everything in his power from alienating his Master.
"What's going on up there?!" Rin's voice shrieked faintly up to him.
Shirou swiftly drapped his body across the ruined couches that he had shattered in his berserker rage. His expression smoothed out as he calmly and confidently faced the rampaging brunette that appeared within his vision.
The second was to stop this from happening. By any means necessary.
But for now, Shirou would meet his Master. It had been so long since he had seen a familiar face...
It was time to don the title of Archer for the rest of this War.
*****
Archer's overcompensation in acting cool and level headed after his firestorm of rage had led him into being excessively beligerent against Rin. The discovery of her short trigger, and her own fit of anger that disturbed him, simultaneously amused him and annoyed him after the fact.
Especially since she had wasted a Command Spell to force him into obedience. The command was too general to really force him to do anything, but it would weaken him enough that it might make all the difference between victory and defeat.
Especially in this War, since Archer's target, the young Shirou Emiya, would be active in the Holy Grail War as the Master of the second strongest Heroic Spirit in play. The one known as Saber - Arturia Pendragon.
'Still...Rin had a different Servant last time...could it be useless to do this?' Archer worried as he finished the last of his cleaning. The older Shirou allowed his body to dematerialize as he took a sidestep in reality. Once he was out of phase with the rest of the world, Archer began to leisurely move through the walls and furniture. No sign of his presence could be felt as he left the Tohsaka Mansion.
He would go ahead and check the young Shirou's home from afar tonight. While it had been a late night for his Master, he could at least try and use his enhanced vision to spy on himself from afar. If only to settle his own unease about the plan.
The skylines of Fuyuki raced past Archer as he used his supernatural abilities. The Heroic Spirit's legs blurred as he moved at a respectable pace for one of the Servants. He quickly arrived in front of his former home before twenty minutes passed. Silence and darkness clung to the young Shirou's home, but something immediately struck him as off with the air around the building.
'I need more space.' Archer turned and leapt to higher ground. The Servant turned and inspected the Emiya compound once he had secured a position. His jaw went slack as he stared at the inside of the complex. Archer's enhanced vision easily cleaved through the darkness of the night, showing several new plants that weren't there before. His magical senses also showed that the boundary field around the Emiya home was at full strength.
What was going on?
Archer decided to remain at his perch this night. He knew that it'd be a tight squeeze in terms of time, but he was pretty sure that he could get back to Rin's mansion. His younger self should be getting up within another three hours to get ready for Sakura. He'd just make his confirmation then and there.
From there, he'd have to think about what he was going to do next. His plan had already begun with the lie he had given Rin. Archer couldn't afford to let her know that he was from the future until he took advantage of his foreknowledge to its fullest.
Archer loathed the thoughts, but the memories that he had freshly gained rolled around in the back of his mind like a rancid pond of water. But like a boy with a fresh scab, the tanned man couldn't let his memories go. Archer closed his eyes and took deep breaths as he sank into the endless memories he had gained from the Holy Grail.
For the next few hours, Archer silently trembled on his rooftop perch.
*****
The sun was slowly rising in the horizon.
Confusion dominated Archer's senses as he vapidly stared at the sight before him. His old teacher, big sister, and guardian Taiga Fujimura was having breakfast. This wasn't anything special for Archer since she always used to come home to eat with him as well, but the woman was dressed in a thick robe.
One that matched with the robe that Kiritsugu Emiya was wearing. Archer felt his body betray him again as he leaned forwards, reinforcing his eyes further as he gazed upon his father with wonder in his eyes. The man looked slightly more aged in the face – but otherwise as fit as ever. Archer almost reached a hand towards Kiritsugu, but he was brought out of his daze when Kiritsugu began to laugh.
Archer glanced away from Kiritsugu to see what had drawn his attention. A teenaged albino girl with beautiful silver hair deliberately made another face at his father.
It reminded him of all the silly faces Taiga used to make for him.
A thrill of shock went through Archer as several of the older girl's features suddenly struck him as she turned with a look of curiosity towards the rooftop he was standing on. The white haired man instinctively dove onto his belly as he saw a pair of scarlet eyes move past where he had been crouching.
'...Ilya?' Archer's heart skipped a few beats as he lightly pressed himself upwards a bit. It was just enough for him to see that Kiritsugu had joined his daughter in gazing at his direction. Something deep within Archer told him that he had to retreat now. Following his gut feeling, the Heroic Spirit quickly crawled away before he could draw more attention.
But...where was the younger Shirou?
*****
For the rest of the morning, Archer existed in a dazed state. He silently followed behind Rin like the ghost he now was. Or sort of was. He had never really gotten too much into theory with his father. This sort of made determining his exact nature confusing, but Archer would consider existential questions later.
Perhaps after creating an electric guitar through tracing. Archer was pretty sure he could compete with any teen heartthrob in suicidal angst now. He glanced down at his outfit.
'And I have an outfit to match.' The white haired man let out a tiny sigh. Rin's attention was drawn to Archer at that, and the man merely offered her a tiny smirk and shake of his head. The twin tailed girl rolled her eyes, but he could see a faint hint of worry beneath the annoyance.
The Heroic Spirit found himself feeling ridiculously grateful for that tiny gesture.
Rin, possibly feeling the sincerity in Archer's new smile, merely offered him a nod. The familiar gesture nearly made the Heroic Spirit break out in laughter, but he didn't want to get her in a bad mood so soon after they had just made up. Archer merely kept his lips shut as they entered the school building.
Both of them immediately froze stiff as a sticky netting of invisible liquid clung to them the second they stepped past the school boundary and into the campus proper. Archer's nose twitched as a honeyed and coppery smelling scent assaulted his nostrils.
'Rider...' Archer narrowed his eyes. The man turned towards his Master; the brunette glanced at him with a look of intense but controlled fury in her turquoise eyes.
"Time for a snake hunt." The tanned Heroic Spirit spoke up.
Rin firmly nodded. "Let's go, Archer."
*****
So stupid...
Archer had been so stupid. Enough that he nearly cried in self-disgust. The white haired man was pinned down at the end of a hallway beneath rubble from the school roof. Fortunately he had managed to somehow dodge Rider's Bellerophon rush, sparing his head and heart from annihilation, but his limbs and majority of his body was useless.
With the strange absence of his younger self, Archer and Rin had to rely on Archer's senses to track down and remove the sigils to the Blood Fort Andromeda that Rider would unleash on the school. The barrier's removal was their highest priority due to the effect it would have in melting everyone within the school into blood and prana for Rider to consume. Unfortunately, Archer's senses had been damaged a long time ago in the reinforcement accident that had bulked up his body muscles and burnt several of his circuits. The deal with Alaya hadn't been to reverse his damage, so his ability to smell magic had remained duller than his younger self.
This had kept them from actively participating in the Holy Grail War...and most likely brought everything to the point it was at right now.
A few pieces of timber fell off from on top of Archer. They revealed Sakura, Rider, and Shinji standing tall in the blood red haze of the Bloodfort. Sakura was breathing heavily, and a wild light was in the depths of her eyes as she glanced between him and her own Servant. The golden bridle of Bellerophon was firmly in her right hand. The Noble Phantasm was projecting two shining threads of gold into the depths of the shadowy beast Rider had turned into.
Shinji was focusing all his attention on Rin, who had a pallid expression on her face and was freely weeping. While Shinji had a knife on her and was firmly gripping onto her with his free hand, his words were what had reduced her to such a vunerable state.
Archer felt hate boil within him at the sight of non-chalant teenager. Yet his hand was stayed. A monstrous beast, composed of shadowy substance and gleaming purple eyes held the Heroic Spirit in its thrall. The monster that Rider had become.
Rider swayed to its full size. The form that Rider had turned into was more than ten feet tall, and the additional limbs it had gained put its size even higher. The swaying pitch black tentacles moved to and fro, their shadowy tips composed of hissing snakes. Wherever they touched instantly corroded like acid had been used to destroy the affected area. It began to slide towards Archer, and he couldn't do anything with those eyes focused on him.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." Sakura softly repeated. With each of the monstrous beast's motions towards Archer, she twitched and silently shed tears. Black pulses of energy pulsed back along the golden reigns into her body occasionally.
"A-archer!" Rin shrieked. Shinji quietly pressed the knife tighter against her jugular, looking faintly disgusted with his own actions.
"Get the hell away from him!" A new voice roared. One that was immediately recognizable. A young boy with short red hair and fiery sherry eyes leapt in between Archer and Rider. In his arms, he awkwardly held a wall mirror. It was slightly more than half his height and about a quarter his side in width, but it did its job.
"Shirou!" Rin let out a cry of shock.
Rider immediately let out a wail of agony once she caught her own reflection in the mirror. She attempted to bring up her arms to cover her shadowed face, but her limbs were rapidly stiffening and slowing. The redhead was holding it up like a shield in front of himself and Archer. The white haired man felt feeling begin to return to his body, but he saw that Shinji was moving to neutralize Rin.
Before a golf club came swinging for the back of Shinji's head, violently swung by a furious looking Taiga Fujimura. Archer's eyes widened as Shinji let out a pained gurgle before collapsing to the ground. Sakura let out a shriek as she leapt away from Taiga. In Archer's opinion, Taiga looked like she wanted to keep attacking the fallen boy, but somehow Taiga held herself back.
Sakura gazed at her wailing Servant and then at her fallen brother for a few moments of indecision. She quickly shook herself out as she noticed that Rin was marching towards her. Her plum eyes briefly watered, but her expression smoothed out.
"R-rider! Get us out of here!" A blaze of light erupted out of the back of Sakura's hand as she and her Servant vanished in bursts of shadow.
"S-sakura!" Rin collapsed to her knees.
Both Shirou and Taiga had uncomfortable looking expression on their faces, but they set them aside as the red mist in the air completely vanished. The older woman moved to kneel besides Rin, who was staring brokenly at the spot Sakura had been standing on.
Shirou carefully set down the mirror he had been holding before he turned to face Archer. He offered the white haired man a kind smile as he began moving the rubble off the baffled Heroic Spirit.
"I'll get you out soon..."
"What are you...?" Archer blurted.
Shirou awkwardly chuckled. "Sorry, but we don't have much time." His expression firmed as he gazed down at Archer. "We need your help. Otherwise that thing with Sakura is going to devour everything in existence. We've seen it eat three gods already." By this point, the odic energy within the Heroic Spirit's system had recovered enough of his body that Archer just finished crawling the rest of the way out.
"That's..." Archer hoped he didn't sound completely confounded.
Shirou looked sympathetic. "I'm Shirou Urobuchi. Can I trust you?" He offered his hand to Archer with an intensely hopeful look on his face.
Archer wondered if he was cursed to lead a life where he was led by the nose by people who were too blunt for their own good.
*****
Edit: Stupid formatting. Anyway. I have more chapters nearly done. They'll be up soon.
Last edited by VelspertheCat; June 21st, 2011 at 07:11 AM.
Spoiler:
I celebrate now.
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