Draconic's Upcoming Fanfic
Because I've failed to find a co-author as of yet, but there are a few scenes that I feel are already worth posting.
I'm a total schmo aren't I?
The following pair of scenes take place somewhere in the middle of the story. Unsure precisely where.
Author's note: This opening sequence just inflated like a balloon. I wanted to get right into the action, but then Sakura found pancake mix, and things kind of went off the rails from there. The front end of the chapter just swelled more than a fat man at thanksgiving dinner. Or in this case, breakfast.
Sakura was dancing gleefully around the kitchenette as she prepared breakfast that morning. She knew he wasn't dead, and that destroying his body only meant he was going to steal one from another innocent victim, but after watching Zouken Matou get ripped apart, she was positively beside herself. The real gratification came from the fact that he hadn't seen it coming, and even seemed frightened for a moment. Knowing that the old worm wasn't invincible was doing wonders for her frayed nerves!
She hummed a cheery tune as she cracked a pair of eggs into a measuring cup, gave them a good stir, and poured them into a pan, waiting for them to sizzle.
“You're up early,” Shirou yawned, walking into the dining room.
“Oh, you know me, Senpai,” she smiled warmly, “I'm always up early.”
She flipped the eggs over in the pan, revealing one side to be fried to perfection. Shirou moved to help out, but she gently shooed him away.
“Please, you don't need to trouble yourself, Senpai. Today is my treat!”
“Er… if you say so.”
“I do say so. Is there anything in particular you'd like me to make?”
“Not really. Whatever you want is good.”
Sakura sighed. One of these days he'd have to request something. She checked the cupboard for some bread for sandwiches.
“Hmm, when did you get pancake mix?” she asked.
Shirou shrugged, then remembering that she had her head in the pantry, he spoke up.
“I don't remember buying any. Let me see.”
She held the package out behind her. It was a large package without any Japanese text on the box.
“I think Rin might have brought this back from England with us,” he answered.
“Oh! Do you think she would mind if I tried making them?”
Finishing with the eggs, she rolled them up in the pan and tossed them into a plate.
“I think she might even get lured out of bed by the scent,” Shirou grinned.
“Well then, that's that! I've never made pancakes before, but I've never come across a dish I can't cook!” she held her skillet in front of her triumphantly. She put her other hand to her lips in thought for a moment before announcing, (in the same tone), “I'm going to need a bigger frying pan!”
She dropped her pan into the sink, reached into the pantry for the flour, and pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge, along with some more eggs.
“Senpai, you're out of eggs,” she said, “Well, you aren't yet, but you will be.”
She poured the mix into a big measuring cup and added water, and digging a larger skillet out of the pantry.
“Good morning, Sakura.”
“You're in a good mood this morning, big brother. You never greet me in the mornings,” Sakura giggled, dropping some butter into the frying pan and continuing to add to the mix as she waited for it to start sizzling. “Grandfather's sticky end last night have you over the moon too?”
“Well obviously. How could I not be happy after seeing that damn vampire get ripped to shreds?”
“You really don't like this guy do you?” Shirou noted absently.
“She spent her childhood buried in a pit of flesh-eating crest worms thanks to him,” Shinji sat down at the table, looking rather irritated by Shirou's question. “I'd be surprised if even she could forgive him for that, even with her bleeding heart. Not that it would be appropriate of her if she did.”
Sakura continued humming cheerfully as she added milk and eggs to the batter and stirred vigorously.
“I wonder if Senpai has any vanilla extract?” she wondered aloud, looking inside the pantry. She quickly found what she was looking for and nearly had the bottle at a full horizontal angle to pour a few drops into the batter when she snapped the bottle upright again. She looked at it suspiciously, turning it around in her hands. It looked okay, but that didn't mean it was okay. She sniffed the bottle and cringed. That did not go well with pancakes.
“Senpai, I think Miss Fujimura switched the labels on your vanilla and your soy sauce bottles.”
“Again? Seriously?!” he groaned, “When is that woman going to grow up?”
“I don't think we can count on that happening any time soon, but I'll switch the labels back when I'm finished.”
“Don't worry about it,” Shirou answered swiftly. “I'll take care of that.”
Sakura nodded, and looked for the 'soy sauce' in the pantry. She opened the bottle and smelled its contents. It was vanilla. No twofold pranks today, thank goodness. She added a few drops to the mix and put both jars away, placing them next to each other in the pantry.
Meanwhile, Shirou and Shinji were having a hushed conversation.
“So why didn't you try to help her while all of this was going on? Shirou growled, lowering his voice.
“I didn't do any less than you, Emiya.”
He couldn't find it within himself to respond. Shinji might have been saying it to be obnoxious, but he was still right. How could this have been going on the entire time he'd known her? Worse, how could he not have realized how desperately she needed help?
Behind them Sakura poured the first batch of pancakes into the frying pan and took a deep breath. So far so good. No complications. They were coming out quite nicely. She flipped each of the sizzling puddles of batter over in the pan. They were cooked to perfection. As if they'd be anything less. Sakura didn't like to brag, but if there was anything she would brag about, it was her culinary abilities. The scent of pancakes began wafting through the house.
Shirou realized that he must have been wearing a particularly self-deprecating expression considering that Shinji noticed his discomfort.
“And so begins my old friend's hour long rail against himself,” Shinji sneered, rolling his eyes, “Let us know when you're done. We'll be here, enjoying this beautiful sunny morning.”
“Please don't blame yourself, Senpai!” Sakura cried, turning around, holding her hands up to her chest, and nearly spilling her measuring cup full of mixed ingredients. “I was the one who always told you that everything was fine! I— I never wanted to worry you…”
“And I'm gonna go throw chunks,” Shinji groaned, about to get up when a hand planted itself firmly on his head.
“Down, you little weasel,” Rin sneered.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” He growled.
Ignoring Rin and Shinji, Saber practically floated into the room. Unlike Rin, who was still in her nightgown, Saber was too dignified to go to breakfast wearing only her lion-print pyjamas and had changed into her casual attire. Dignified though she was, that didn't stop her from leaning way over the countertop and trying to see what manner of divine substance Sakura was creating.
“Something smells heavenly,” she said dreamily.
“Just wait a few more minutes, Saber and I'll have a full batch ready for the table.”
“Don't make her wait too long though. Saber tends to be pretty hungry in the mornings, and from the looks of things, she might start worshiping you for your food.
“Breakfast's on!” Sakura announced, a huge stack of pancakes piled onto a dish. Rin, eyes sparkling in a manner more suited to Arturia, hurried over to the fridge and snatched her maple syrup and strawberry sauce. Lancer and Robin both materialized as well. Neither of them needed to eat, but it was only polite.
Saber immediately piled three of the fried pastries onto her plate, getting to them before anyone else. Rin, jar of syrup in hand, sidled up to the blonde. "Try them with this. Pancakes are good, but trust me when I say, you haven't really eaten them if you skip out on the syrup.”
Her mouth already full of pancake, Saber simply nodded and took the proffered jar, pouring a sugary puddle onto the side of her plate.
She dipped her next slice into the syrup, placed it in her mouth, and eyes widening like an owl, she snatched six more pancakes off the pile.
“Your food is like ambrosia of the gods. I've never tasted anything so good, even while I was alive!” she babbled, shovelling food into her mouth and licking syrup from her face.
“She's like a puppy!” Rin giggled, playfully smacking Shirou's shoulder.
“Mpph!” Saber protested, chewed, swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried again “Excuse me. I mean to say that if you are to compare me to a baby animal, I'd much prefer to be equated with a lion cub, or a wyrmling.”
“Wyrmling?” Shirou asked.
“Another word for dragon hatchling,” Rin explained, pouring herself a glass of milk.
Without any warning, Saber was suddenly on her feet, her armor materializing as she drew Invisible Air.
“Uh, is everything alright?” Sakura asked nervously, looking out from under the kitchen flap.
“I assure you it has nothing to do with your food,” she answered firmly. “Did you just put blueberries in that next batch? No! I mustn't be distracted. There's something nearby. Something dangerous. I'm afraid I can't quite identify it from within the bounded field, but—”
The doorbell rang, and Shirou stood up. Saber looked at him as though he'd completely lost his mind.
“Well, what if it's someone we know? If there really is something here that's dangerous enough to make you interrupt your breakfast, then I'm not leaving them outside to be attacked, or worse.”
“Shirou, I must object to this course of action!”
She spoke too late, as Shirou was almost at the front door already. Saber rubbed her eyes with her fingers in frustration as he clicked the lock open and slid the door aside.
Standing outside in the morning light was the shape of a young girl. Her brown hair was mostly hidden by a dirty grey jacket that she wore over an appallingly tattered white dress, and a pair of sandals that were so worn down that they barely even kept her feet from touching the pavement. Her face was downcast and she avoided eye contact when she spoke.
“Is this… is this where Kiritsugu lives?” she asked.
Her voice sounded like it might have been very pretty but for the fact she was so hoarse that she couldn't have spoken for months at the very least.
“I…” Shirou stammered, “Who are you, exactly? How do you know my dad?”
“Shirou, I implore you not to let this…thing inside the house!” Saber urged, “I can't quite say what it is, but it is most certainly not human!”
“Huh? What are you talking about, she's just a girl, no older than fifteen, or so if I were to guess, of course she's…” he trailed off as he noticed the brownish stains on her ruined dress and suddenly picked out the scent of copper she was exuding.
He took a careful step back. What was this girl?
“Please, you don't have to… you don't have to let me in. Really, it's probably…better if you don't. Just tell me if… if Kiritsugu Emiya lives here. I'm b-begging you.”
“I-I'm sorry, but Kiritsugu Emiya hasn't lived here in years,” Saber said pointedly. “Leave now, or face the consequences.”
“You said he was your dad, right?” the girl rasped, “You must… you must know where he is!”
Shirou couldn't bring himself to tell her. She seemed so…broken… already. Maybe it was better to just show her. Against his better judgement, he put his shoes on and pulled his jacket over his shoulders.
“Follow me. I'll take you to him.”
“Shirou!”
He reached out a hand.
She didn't take it.
“What's all this yelling about? Honestly—” Rin cut herself off as she saw the girl standing in front of Shirou. She could see what it was at a glance, and there was only one thing she knew she should do.
“Gandr!” she shrieked, loosing a volley of curses at the child. The girl turned to look past Shirou and with unnatural speed, she dived out of the way, the spells crashing into the wall across the street. Rin took her chance to grab Shirou by the arm and yank him back inside.
“Get away from it!” she shrieked, pulling them both backward and tumbling into a heap in the front hall.
Untangling herself from her boyfriend, she got back to her feet and slammed the door shut in front of her, making sure to lock it.
The girl's eyes had gone wide with shock, and in the brief moment he had seen them, he had looked into twin glowing pools of blood.
“That thing's a dead apostle, Shirou! It's not a little girl!”
she scowled at him.
“A what?”
“A dead apostle. She—I mean it—is a freaking vampire! Worse even! It doesn't turn you into a vampire when it bites you. Instead you turn into a shambling undead monstrosity that only has one purpose; namely to bite as many other warm bodies as possible, and turning them as well before being slaughtered!
“Ugh, and now we're going to have to scour the town and purge anyone she's bitten before the church's inquisitors show up and kill half the city,” Rin growled.
“What?! You're joking, right?” Shirou shuddered at the thought. There was no such thing as undead! They were made up! Just like…
Just like heroic spirits that could be summoned at will. Or dragons. Or magic spells. Or legendary swords and nearly immortal old men with bodies made out of worms.
How could something so horrific possibly exist though? Why would anyone create such a thing?
“Just tell me where he is,” someone rasped behind them. They scrambled back to the door, as the girl seemed to appear behind them out of nowhere.
“I climbed over the wall around the house,” she explained. Her red eyes glowed ominously, even in the morning sunlight.
“You have to die, you know that right?” Rin snarled.
The girl looked furious for a moment, then blood began to leak from her eyes. Was she crying blood?
“D-Don't let any of m-my blood get into your bodies or y-y-you'll end up… like me. I can't leave you alive if you do. I won't turn anyone else! Even if it means I have to kill people.”
“I'll admit that you're surprisingly conscientious for an undead monstrosity.”
“I can explain myself later… please though, just help me find Kiritsugu. He might destroy me himself anyway. Please…”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Saber murmured.
* * * * *
The girl, or rather, the creature, began to suspect something was wrong when Shirou began walking alongside the cemetery fence
“N-no, th-this can’t be right.”
“I’m sorry. He’s… he’s right over there,” said Shirou, pointing to a monument a few rows in.
“This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong!”
Rin sighed, following the dead apostle at a short distance.
“Okay, fine. I’ll admit that she seems to be retaining her humanity to a surprising extent, but don’t let your guard down.”
“I won’t,” Shirou nodded.
They found the girl sprawled out across the monument bearing the name of Kiritsugu Emiya, sobbing. Shirou had never seen anything look so utterly miserable.
“Too late! I was too late! All the time in the world and I couldn’t get here in time! I’m sorry! Kerry, I’m so sorry! It’s-s-s my fault. It was all m-my f-f-fault…”
“Okay, now I’m getting curious,” Rin groused, folding her arms across her chest.
“Look, that’s long enough, tell us what’s going on here?” Shirou insisted, “You owe us an explanation.”
“And in case you think you’re getting away, I’m more than ready to blast you into ribbons if you make any sudden movements,” Rin added.
The girl didn’t respond, she just continued crying over the grave. It was several minutes before anyone spoke again.
“Everything’s gone now,” she sobbed. “Why did I ever have to wake up? I wish I were still a ghoul! Being a monster would be better than this!”
She curled in on herself.
“My name is Shirley,” she whimpered. “Kiritsugu was… he was my best friend… when we were kids. And I ruined… EVERYTHING!”
“We lived on an island in the Philippines. Long story short, his dad was studying dead apostles to try and create an elixir that would grant eternal life. I was so stupid. I was so sure it would work, so I tested a dose of pills on myself… and within seconds I was desperate for blood. I ripped apart an entire coop of chickens, but it didn’t help,” she babbled on deliriously, “That’s where Kerry found me. His best friend, covered in blood, her eyes glowing red like a monster, begging him to kill her. He couldn’t do it. And because he couldn’t do something that he should never have had to, I brought the effing zombie apocalypse to our island. The same night, a bunch of men showed up and burned the entire island to the ground. I have no idea how they missed me. I was shambling around one of the beaches out in the open. They should have found me. They should have.”
She broke down into a fit of sobbing. Monster or not, even Saber was beginning to pity her.
Shirou reached toward her and she smacked his hand away as though it were a bomb.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “If you touch me I’ll bite you, I won’t be able to stop myself! If I killed Kerry’s son… I don’t know how I’d…” a shudder ran up her spine, and she lurched over onto her side vomiting blood. It probably wasn’t her own. After emptying her stomach, she collapsed and seemed to lose herself again. She lay there and continued talking.
“I don’t know how long I was like that. I just remember waking up feeling like I hadn’t eaten in years. I felt like I was dying, but of course, I knew I was dead already. But the worst thing—the worst part of it was that I remembered. I remembered everything! I should have gone insane on the spot, but I didn’t. I don’t know why! I wish I had! I remembered ripping out the throats of the children that had been my friends! My neighbours! I killed everyone I came across! Everyone! I knew every single one of them personally and I slaughtered them like animals! I killed every last one of them even if I didn’t bite all of them myself… Some of them had even tried to help me, not even knowing the kind of danger they were in when I staggered though their doors… M-my own friends. I watched them turn into groaning, shambling freaks, and I could remember all of it perfectly.
“I walked here from the island. Corpses can’t swim, so I just held my breath. I can hold it for years now. I’ve tried. Animals avoided me. I guess even fish can sense danger better than people. After getting to the mainland, I avoided being seen, but I still killed almost twenty more people. The first person I saw after waking up was a boy about my age. At least… the age I look. I bit his throat, and then remembered what I’d have done to him if I let him lie there. I gnawed through the flesh of his neck and snapped his head off at the spine. I still can’t bear to think about what I’m doing whenever I drink blood. All I knew was that even if I killed people, I was never going to turn anyone else into a ghoul. I would have been a sight, if anyone had seen me. A teenaged girl dragging a headless corpse with her. I found a kitchen supply store and stole a meat cleaver. I continued walking along the coast. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Not for almost a year, until I remembered that Karry had gotten off the island. I knew it because I never saw his corpse when I was still a ghoul. So I decided that I had to find Kiritsugu. If anyone would be okay with what I had become, it’d have been him. And I was too late. He’s already dead. I could probably even bring him back to life, but only as a monster.”
Shirly sat up again, the stains on her dress seeming to grow darker as she adjusted it. It looked like she had run out of tears.
“That woman the police found beheaded in a storage locker,” she whimpered miserably, “that was me. So were three of the recent disappearances. I froze the bodies in a freezer in what looks like some sort of storage cellar. They should last me a year, but… I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to drink blood anymore. I’d do anything to go back to being a normal person. I wish I were dead but at the same time, I’m too afraid to die,” she shifted closer to Kiritugu’s gravestone. And then a pair of arms wrapped around her, on instinct, she bit down on the wrist only to jar her teeth against metal.
“Wha…?”
“Even if you were to bite me, I wouldn’t turn into a ghoul. You have nothing to worry about,” Saber whispered. “And I can’t vouch for the quality of my blood either. You see, I’m technically already dead as well.”
Shirley quivered like dying bird in Saber’s arms. It was the first time since she was human that she had been able to touch someone without turning them into a monster. She let herself fall into the embrace as Saber dispelled her armor. At the scent of blood she again tried to bite her. The Servant didn’t even react, but the moment her teeth broke the skin it felt like she was drinking liquid metal. She coughed.
“Careful now,” Saber whispered.
She let herself relax and wrapped her own arms around the Servant.
“I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting that,” Rin said. She smiled, slipping her hand into Shirou’s. “And here we are, standing in a graveyard with a vampire. I can cross that off my bucket list.”
“Whatever you say.”
Shirley had taken to mumbling into Saber’s chest as she lay there.
“I’m sorry, Kerry.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
* * * * *
(Scene end)
Author’s Note: I saw episode 18 of Fate/Zero and when I didn’t explicitly see Shirley get killed, I immediately knew I wanted her in my story. There’s a one in one hundred chance of a ghoul awakening as one of the living dead, which is pretty much what she is. It seems that Norikata Emiya's formula did something after all, but as you can see, she still isn't quite right. Anyway, I expected that if Arcueid could be nice, couldn’t Shirley be a nice vampire too, even if she wasn’t a True Ancestor? Doesn’t she deserve that?
I think it didn’t turn out quite the way she’d have liked though. Maybe I should write a scene mimicking this with the clock turned back to before Kiritsugu died?
I’m sorry, Shirley. You really deserved so much better…
Meanwhile, back at the Emiya residence, Sakura and her Archer (currently planning on giving her Robin Hood) are going to be defending themselves against Assassin’s (Carmilla’s) first incursion against Zouken’s disobedient grandchildren. I have a scene thought out that makes Sakura look like a total badass without even needing to go dark. Speaking of, doesn't Christina Valenzuela just do a stellar job voicing Sakura? She's just adorable! (I'm absolutely positive that I just alienated myself from at least one third of the site. I'm just sure of it).
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Originally Posted by My F/GO Collab Dream Never
