Notes: Need help with writing this.
The rain had a bitter taste to it. In this pitch black alleyway, his senses could only pick up the sound of hundreds of thousands of rain drops splattering against some kind of alloy of metal. Waver had not encountered this material before, but what little scholarly interest he had was quickly lost in light of his situation. He had no clue as to where he was; only that it seemed to be something of a dream than anything real. It could not be real, could it? He wondered, looking left and right in morbid curiosity. Such a place he was in could not be anywhere on Earth.
These blinding, quick flashes of light were not so different from London, Waver decided. They were just brighter and stranger. And larger, Waver corrected himself quickly. He knew of the metropolises that were scattered across the world, each with millions living within. But none of them compared to where he was now. If he was to describe it, he could only say that he was in a mega-metropolis.
Everything that was not alight was dark as shadow, looming over him like giants. But even the modern structures that he knew of could not compare to the sheer size and height of these buildings. The rain only amplified the sense of a shadowy maze that he had somehow stumbled into.
If he was honest with himself, Waver might have said that he was lucky. After all, he had just escaped the deathtrap known as Fuyuki City. That place still horrified him; at least, it has haunted him with nightmares for the past week that he had left. He had been in a rough shape then, and he was no better now. Still, he had found something there that was, in hindsight, worth much more to him than any lecturer’s respect. But that was the past.
Sirens passed him, as he brooded in this tight, damp alley. This entire world seemed foreign to him: everything from the sights to the smells didn’t seem right. The buildings around him were formed in tasteless structures, as if mass produced by a machine and not built by man. The vehicles that flew passed him were plain yet alien. They had literally flown away—something that he had thought to be an impossibility for mundane humans to achieve. But they were mundane; he had seen and felt that much at least.
And this frightened him.
It was not the sights and sounds and smells of industry that caused him to pause here, in this alley however. Those were merely extra signs. Waver had felt it already that he was a stranger in a strange land. It was the mana of the planet that caused him to freeze. It was abundant and rich, yet not pressing down on him like an overwhelming force. The sensation had caused him to postulate that he was on a different planet entirely… but that’s impossible… right?
Even without these signs, there was still the very feeling of change that shook his soul. It was like he had gone through his life with only black and white, and had finally discovered Technicolor. As much as he might wish to deny it, all the signs were there. Science and technology had changed—improved—by leaps and bounds in what seemed like an hour in his perspective. And the worst thing was Waver could not even detect a single sign of his kind, the magus. It was as if they never existed.
This shouldn’t happen at all! It shouldn’t happen to anyone—certainly not him! Waver wanted to cry into the sky and ask what he did to deserve this. He wanted to just go home, where ever that was, and crawl into his bed and never wake up. It was this moment that caused his mental fortitude to slip, that he even let himself wish he was back in London, going about his dreary life as a student in the Association. But it was just a moment. He had already realized he couldn’t go back once he opened the figurative Pandora’s Box, even back during the Fourth Holy Grail War. So he could only match forward… and hold his head high with pride, as a comrade of the King of Conquerors.
“Ow!” He ducked, having just smacked his forehead against a steel railing on the side of the alley when he straightened his back. “This isn’t how an adventure should begin,” he complained to himself, “And somehow, I think this is all your fault, Rider.”
Despite being an alien in an alien world, his clothes were not strange enough to warrant a second glance from the humans who passed him. He was sure they were human, and yet their outfits were all too plain, yet there were tiny pieces that caused Waver to frown. There was a piece here, a tiny gadget there, and an extra zipper or pocket somewhere else all of which added up to be a strange fashion that he had never seen before, outside of the few periodicals that featured science fiction.
He quickened his steps, breathing quickly as he scanned his surroundings frantically. Nothing was right and everything seemed to be out of place. This city was built too orderly, but all these streets were familiar. His eyes widened but he denied his first theory, muttering under his breath, “No… that’s impossible. There’s no way this is…”
…He stopped. Just as every other building loomed over him, this one was no different. But it caused him to pause. There was nothing on the building that drew his attention. It was the sign in front of the building, on its small, token gesture of a lawn. Waver’s face was like the stone engraving he stared at, shocked.
Fuyuki Central Library…
It was different, completely different. Waver thought that the buildings around it, and the library itself, had been plucked up, crushed, and then uniformly built together to be part of this larger metropolis. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? No matter how Waver tried to deny it in his mind, the proof was evident. He walked up to the building slowly, shaking his head from side to side in confusion before placing his hands on the shutters of the locked doors of the building. He slid his palm against the cold metal, slick and freezing to the touch from the rain. It felt real. The cold felt real.
He pinched himself. “Ow!” He winced before frowning. These shutters were identical to those that his Rider had demolished on the first night of their meeting. The thought of those memories invoked a smile on Waver’s face, wiping away his frown and confusion. Happier times, he thought, ‘I was such an idiot back then.’
But reality smacked him square in the face. If this library existed, then…
…Waver turned and looked upwards at the towering skyscrapers of the city. Unlike the structures he was used to, these buildings reached hundreds of stories into the sky, like monstrous tentacles scratching at the clouds. In fact, many of the taller buildings seemed to have pierced through the clouds and heavens, leaving Waver to only wonder where he was.
His clothes were still the same as always, only wetter. His tie, his polo, his sweater, his striped, silken pants and everything else were still in place. It was the same outfit he had worn into the war, like a bad copy of a Hogwarts uniform. At that inane thought, Waver couldn’t take it anymore.
He looked up at the stormy skies and laughed. A hand had reached up to support himself, but against the rippled reflections on the ground, this was like an image of insanity. He felt warm droplets roll down his cheeks, but were they tears? Or were they just warm drops of rain?
Hadn’t he just escaped this city?
Waver’s knees shook, but he didn’t fall. The memory of the King of Conquerors prevented him from bending his knees to anyone else, and his pride wouldn’t allow him to lose control so easily. Echoes of Iskander’s voice brought a slow grin to his visage. With that, his moment of weakness was over. He wiped away the rain and ran.
By the definition of his memories, everything seemed to make sense. Despite being a strange world, by simply following the map of Fuyuki City that he was familiar with, Waver found that he could navigate the streets with ease.
“First,” he panted methodically as he sprinted down the road, “I need somewhere warm and dry. A place to stay would be…” He knew where he wanted to go.
For a regular human, running without stop for an hour could be rather straining. Waver sprinted quickly towards the outskirts of the city at speeds normal humans would be hard pressed to achieve, but with his carefully regulated control of prana, he was hardly winded. As he passed through the edges of Fuyuki City, he passed a familiar farm, and could even hear the clucking within. He paused and gingerly crept closer, peering inside the large barn-like structure that he had come across. “…Huh,” he nodded in surprise and muttered, “I know those chickens.”
During the Fourth Holy Grail War of Fuyuki City, Waver had stolen those chickens to prepare the summoning ritual circle to summon Rider. It was one of the first steps he took to becoming his own person and fighting for himself. The memory of that night, when he had cut the critters up for their blood caused Waver to flinch, but it was the thought of what happened before that caused him to grimace. He had spent over an hour trying to catch those chickens, with his hands covered with peck-marks and with Waver covered in chicken droppings. It was something of a horrible memory that he wished to forget.
When Waver arrived, he was surprised by how alike the MacKenzies’ house was to the one in his ‘world’. The building looks new and better protected, but it was the same house he had stayed at. There were strange appliances and trinkets inside and outside of the building, but in the end, it was mostly the same. This far away from the city, the house stood without any intimidating, looming skyscrapers or strange vehicles running around. In fact, this place was rather isolated which was idle for Waver.
As it turned out, the house was occupied by the MacKenzies, who looked the same as he had left them. Waver wasted only a moment before he hypnotized them in the same manner as he did before, with the same results. This entire process wasn’t long, but it felt weird for Waver. After all, everything happened so similarly that he felt he was in a dream.
The MacKenzies, an old couple that lived in Fuyuki, warmly welcomed their ‘grandson’. Like how it was in Waver’s ‘world’, Glen and Martha MacKenzie had immigrated to Japan twenty years prior, though their real son and grandson had left them to return to Canada. Waver discovered this information through the same hypnosis skills he used before; it was a strange déjà vu for him.
After a shower and putting on some of the dry, clean clothes of the real grandson, Waver spent a few minutes staring at the room he was given. With trembling hands, he ran his fingers against the bed sheets, mumbling, “This bed… it’s exactly the same.”
After snapping out of his daze, Waver explored other parts of the house. When he peeked into the couple’s refrigerator, he grumbled, “Even in a different world, bread is still cheap and terrible.” But even as he complained good-naturedly, he took a piece out and munched on it slowly. The MacKenzies were extremely accommodating, just as how he remembered them to be, and they had left him to his own devices.
There was something similar to a television with a holographic projection in the living room where the television should have stood. For a genius magus of Waver’s intellect, it only took him a very long time to figure out how to turn it on. But he did it, and almost jumped back in surprise when the machine flickered on. From what he could tell, channels and new stations were still the same as always.
“…Earth nations gathered around their vidsets today for Super Bowl CCXIX, an annual sporting and media event that culminates the North-American-Union-Rules football season…”
Waver lounged back as the… vidset… flipped to a news channel. He sighed and sat back, barely listening to the news report, only contemplating what his next move was. From here, he needed to find other magus. If he was stranded… that line of thought didn’t bode well for him at least.
“…The New York Giants defied expectations and took down the Beijing Dragons in a tight 24-19 game. The highlight was a 69-yard pass from Krogan QB Bragus Thul…”
And what’s more, there are real alien creatures running around the world now. Waver sighed again, “What a surprise, my world is turned upside down,” he grumbled, too tired to manage anything more than a deadpan. “What would you do if you were me, Rider?”
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Originally Posted by deviatesfish
