Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou
Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
It was a beautiful day in Ramaqem, a city of tourism and vacation resorts in the tropical regions of Mid Childa. Or at least, it promised to be. The light blue sky chased away the black, dark blue and purple of the night, and the sun began raising from the east behind the sea. The few wisps of clouds present in the sky had been painted pink by the atmosphere, and the daytime wildlife had begun to stir.
Emiya Shirou, Sophomore in Homurabara and all around nice guy was already bathed and dressed. But it was more accurate to say that he was still awake. Today was the last day of the vacation he was on, but the time difference between Ramaqem and Fuyuki meant that that particular Saturday [equivalent] morning in Ramaqem happened simultaneously with Fuyuku City's Saturday night.
To avoid Jet-Lag (a term from Earth that subsisted within the social circle of people born or raised on Earth), he and Vivio would leave in the morning from Mid Childa, arriving late at night at Earth and staying awake straight through the night until some time in the mid-afternoon on Sunday. That way they'd wake up on Monday refreshed and ready for school. The long sleep and their own magical natures would help take care of their tiredness.
For that reason, they were up and about before the sun came up, leaving the adults to sleep in after the late night they'd had partying and drinking. This included Einhart, who had apparently not been able to deny Hayate given that she was snoozing on a pair of kitchen chairs under a blanket. Vita was on the couch and holding on to Zafira's wolf form like it was a giant teddy bear, while Shamal rested against a corner covered by a veritable hill of towels. Dry ones, thankfully. The other people who'd come to Ramaqen weren't visible, but the summer house they had been staying at had many rooms, with a lot of them closed when Shirou had passed them in the morning. He dared not open them, wary of what he'd find behind unlocked doors locks.
It had been a party with Lady Hayate involved, after all.
They'd made their goodbyes the day before, so Shirou was only waiting for Vivio to meet up with him in the reception of the resort so they could leave for the Dimensional Travel Station and from there to Earth. The employees that puttered around looked wide awake, probably used to working odd hours but nevertheless enjoying the reprieve from what their many guests and clients put them through while they were awake. Shirou was personally looking forward to cooking his own meals, following recipes both tested and experimental and eating them with friends and family.
"Shirou!"
Turning towards the source of the voice, the redhead saw his blonde friend run up to him, waving one of her arms in the air. His luggage had been stored by Lotus Blade, so the only thing on him other than his clothes was the skintight metallic-looking bracelet on his wrist. Smiling at his friend, Shirou asked her.
"Are you ready, Vivio?"
The cloned Sankt Kaiser pouted.
"I can't find my camera. It's not where I thought it was and I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find it. I'll just get Nanoha-mama to send it over later."
With that, Vivio intertwined her arm with Shirou's and began pulling him away. As a vacationing spot, Ramaqen was littered with details small and big that aimed at catering for the whims of the visitors without harming their reputation or prestige. One of them was the Skyway, a relatively simple illusion and detection field combo that created a network of translucent tunnels in the sky, invisible from the outside and usable by mages who could fly in order to avoid the traffic in the ground. However, teleportation and transport magic was still prohibited in all but a few exceptional cases, and there was a speed limit inside the Skyway.
Vivio and Shirou walked over to the closest ground entrance to the Skyway, a platform clearly identified by a big sign and a distinctive glowing circle on the ground. After registering their names and destination at the attendant, they flew over the city until they arrived at the Dimensional Travel Terminal, their destination. The two had been involved deeply in a conversation about their opponents in the (Pairs) Tournament where they had won a vacation to Ramaqen as part of the reward for getting first place. The high point of the tournament had been the fact that two rival criminal organizations had been using it as a proxy battlefield to settle their disputes with a fair third-party referee, with everyone else getting caught in the crossfire. While doing their best to cheat their way to victory.
At the end, the team that Shirou and Vivio formed had ended up disqualifying the star representatives from both sides, who had joined forces with the reigning winners in order to defeat them. Magical Enhancement Drugs and a few illegal artifacts were the tools used by the champions from the last year to cheat, but the combination of Shirou and Vivio was simply too good for the other competitors and the two newcomers had ended up winning the tournament. Einhart had had to beg off, given that her position in her job had not allowed her to be present for the fights, so she had only been around to watch some of the matches.
Sadly, at the Travel Terminal they got delayed. Somebody back at the resort had managed to wake early, and had called and stopped Vivio before they left for Earth in order to at least send her the photo data from her camera wirelessly, but it was taking too long. The meteorite rain that had fallen the night before had apparently contained a special material that was interfering with the communications, making the normally fast process last for what seemed like ages.
"You go ahead, Shirou. I'll finish this in a moment and get there before you know it," Vivio said.
"I don't know, Vivio, just leaving you like this is..." Shirou protested, his people helping complex reared it's extremely hard head.
"It's okay, Shirou," Vivio offered, "I'm actually safer here in Ramaqen than in Fuyuki, with all the vampires and sliders and crazy mages and giant crystal spider aliens," she finished saying with a small smile on her face.
The joke served to calm Shirou down. As did the funny idea of giant crystal spider aliens. Vivio just stood in place, tapping her foot while the data transferred.
"Still...Vivio, if it doesn't take too long I can just wait with you."
Shirou was calmer than before, but still not convinced. But even so he had a feeling that he would end up going ahead. Vivio was the person who knew him best and who knew perfectly well which of his buttons to push, so he was wary about pushing her too far and finding their kitchen devoid of anything but instant meals and cutlery. Or worse, fast food leftovers. He had cried the last time it happened. And then he'd convinced Sacred Heart to auto-translate evrything that Vivio saw, heard or spoke into the ancient Zulu language for a week.
"Shirou..."
Shirou gave in.
"Alright, you win. But," Shirou said, raising his hand to stop Vivio from talking, "I'll wait for you on the other side, alright?" he asked with a warm smile on his face.
Vivio smiled back at him, looking relieved. As he moved over to the completely empty outgoing line, he wondered what Vivio was relieved about. Something like his saving-people-thing resulting in overprotective episodes never crossed his mind, even if his friends and acquaintances had seen them become a familiar sight over the years. Not a common one, by any means, but for example everyone remembered the time when Shirou tricked Vita into missing a mission by feeding her a steady supply of food until it was too late for her to go.
Vita had been reprimanded, and the actual mission had still been successful, so Shirou had only gotten a stern talking to from the adults in his life. He had been frustrated for weeks following the death of his father, Kiritsugu, and it had been far from the only repetitive task he had done in order to work off his heightened temper. Wasting a whole afternoon at school after gym class to try jumping a bar without magic, training flight magic with Vivio, cooking all sorts of dishes for Vita...Shirou's actions during this time had gained him fame as the 'Helping Terminator' in Mid Childa.
Shirou had heard of the term, but like Nanoha with the <<White Devil>> title, he hadn't quite made the connection that they were talking to him and not about Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in the Terminator movies. Or about Amuro Ray, in Nanoha's case. They never paid much attention to those kind of discussion in the first place, and even then, those tended to happen outside their earshot.
The process of leaving, however, wasn't without problems. It seemed like the data on the targets for the Dimensional Transfer spell had been corrupted by the meteor shower, so instead of appearing inside the empty building in Shinto that the TSAB bought and maintained, he had to choose between appearing in Homurabara Gauken (which was the backup location in their database for some reason) or giving the coordinates of his house to the company in charge of the Dimensional Travel Terminal.
As his house was technically a classified location he couldn't give them the coordinates, and he didn't have the knowledge of the dimensional topography in Fuyuki or the skill in magical theory to calculate the coordinates of another safe arrival point. Doing the math in his head, he supposed that he would arrive too late to the school for anyone to be there, even guards or janitors, so he gave a short message to the attendant to let Vivio know he'd stick around the school building to wait for her.
Moving to the Translocation Cylinder at last, Shirou looked around the terminal one last time. Spying Vivio taking a spot in the line right behind an aged and wrinkled couple that was now talking with the attendant, Shirou waved at her, trying to catch her attention.
A voice came from the walls of the Cylinder, pleasant yet gender neutral. "Please, remember that active spell casting, luggage outside limits regulated in the polities of Dim'Sea Travels or the detection of illegal substances are grounds for immediate transfer abortion and-"
Finally catching Vivio's eyes with his own, he smiled at her and waved, feeling the magical power in the artifact that surrounded him rise and refine itself, undergoing rapid and guided mana linking by the hardware performing the Dimensional Transfer spell. The excess mana associated into junk data, and quickly underwent a decaying process during which they steadily released a soft white light. All in all, it was the official end to his and Vivio's short vacation and return to the normalcy of life on Earth as normal High Schoolers.
Despite what a somewhat widespread belief in Administrated Worlds said, Dimensional Travel was not instant. This mistake was repeated in all manner of places, like movies, jokes, novels, poems or even in official statements. In reality, a high sensitivity of a special type, one typically found in high ranking mages and people with Rare Skills, was enough to knowingly compress or dilate the internal trip-time of the spell, within a region rigidly defined by the spell itself.
Shirou was one of those who could do this, but he usually spent as little time waiting in transit as he could. He spent the transfer period deciding what he'd cook next, and where he would buy the ingredients. He wasn't sure of where he would appear in the school, besides knowing that he wouldn't be trapped inside a locked building.
But instead of the quiet and empty school grounds he was expecting, Shirou was treated to an explosion of sounds as soon as he appeared. Instincts and training took over and made him jump several meters back in an instant, simultaneously allowing Lotus Blade to leave its bracelet form in exchange for a full sized gleaming katana. It was a single silvery metal piece, even if the texture of the hilt was functionally identical to that of a normal sword.
", 「Load」"
It was just in time. Shirou held Lotus Blade's katana form in a fully defensive stance, when something hit him with enough power to send him flying back towards the trees, almost to the entrance of the school. Only the automatic flight spell cast by Lotus Blade allowed Shirou to land safely, instead of simply rolling in midair until he crash-landed into a tree. All that Shirou managed to see before he was sent flying was that whoever deal the blow wasn't even staring at him.
"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Shirou cried once he regained his bearings.
He had been thrown away as an afterthought, but the force in the blow had been incredibly strong. With his body automatically settling into a combat stance, he vaguely spied a girl in red on the edges of his vision, and distinctly saw a pair of men standing a couple meters apart. One of them was dressed in close fitting black armor and what looked like a long red open coat, while the other wore a blue armored skin-suit and metallic pauldrons.
The one in red and black had the black and white Bakuya and Kanshou in his hands, while the other had the red Gae Bolg. His inner being automatically processed the information on the weapons, as the one who dressed in blue and wielded the red Irish spear of legend began walking in his general direction. Simply by watching him move, Shirou understood the difference in skill. It was clear that Shirou stood little to no chance to win.
"You're not half bad, for a kid," the man in blue called out with a drawl. With more time to process things, Shirou noted that the other man had red eyes and blue hair styled into a simple ponytail. "The problem is... since you aren't a part of the war, you are an outsider. And the rules say that outsiders must be killed, so I'm afraid you'll have to die, then. My Master is a stickler for the rules sometimes, it seems."
"Die? In a war in Fuyuki? What do you mean?" Shirou asked, his mind racing even as the top of Lotus Blade sought the ground.
"Goodbye, kid," the man said. And with that, he disappeared-
"," at that instant, Shirou's blade touched the ground.
-only to reappear alarmingly close to the redheaded mage. The man swung Gae Bolg 「刺し穿つ死棘の槍」 in a wide arc that would gore Shirou's torso, only for the ground surrounding the tip of Lotus Blade to shoot up as fast as a bullet. The combined mass and speed of the rising ground was enough to save Shirou from injury, but the blow was simply too much to be stopped without problems and a cloud of dust, filled with magic that dropped visibility to almost naught.
Shirou's spell, Split Sky, enchanted the ground around him to act as a magically reinforced fortress wall, raising so fast that it could cut incoming attacks in two and so strong and durable that for all but the most skilled mages in the Bureau it took a finishing move to pierce it. Combined with the way it automatically rose and sunk back to the ground at high speeds, independently reacting to danger and its own comparatively low mana cost, it was a very good defensive spell. It could buy the user time to prepare a finishing move, earning a place among the list of spells and skills called a 'Perfect Defense' in tournament circles despite forcing the caster to stay in one spot without moving. And Shirou had no hope of casting it without Lotus Blade.
Yet it had been swept aside in a single blow by the man before him.
That alone told him that the man was at the very least on the same level as the Wolkenritter, the Ace of Aces or his teacher. A glowing array materialized behind him, an animated two-dimensional Schlegel diagram of a tesseract, one filled with Mid Childan symbols running along its edges. It was a product of the cusp of Mid Childan magical knowledge, and it contained the framework for the equations involved in the magic spells Shirou used, as it ws developed directly for him. The boy's voice rang in the air, his own body hidden by the cloud of magically reinforced dust that was created with the destruction of the Split Sky protection.
"「Series Gladius」
Sagita Magica
It was the spell that counted as Shirou's trademark long ranged area denial and suppression fire spell. And it made it rain swords. They were fairly simple swords of various makes and shapes without any particular magical reinforcement, but they filled the air, flew at high speeds and were aimed at the man in blue. Undaunted, the man and his spear weaved and danced around, deflecting them all without getting scratched even once. As far as straightforward skill with weapons went, it was now clear that he was the best that Shirou had ever seen, beyond that of the members of the Wolkenritter.
Still, the blue-haired man was pinned for long enough, and Shirou took the opportunity to move up and back in the air. This time, a square appeared below his feet, parallel to the ground, while the tesseract's projection behind his back more than tripled in size and sped up its cycle. Shirou began casting 「斬監剣」 Execution Blade, a spell that would give him a giant weapon he would then swing with Transport Magic to great effect.
But the Irish spear, Gae Bolg, pierced his heart.
Magical energy crackled on his skin as the remains of a broken protection spell shattered, and Shirou's expression froze in place with his eyes focused on what was right in front of them. The face of the red eyed man was full of a savage complacency, like a wolf dealing the final blow to its current prey. Shirou's corpse fell from the air gracelessly, sliding off Gae Bolg without much fanfare. Lotus Blade was nowhere to be seen, having vanished from sight when the barrier jacket had seemingly broken.
"A pity. He'd have been more fun if he'd allowed to live," the man in blue commented without looking very sorry.
The girl in red glared at the spearman, her eyes full of a cold rage that the rest of her face did not show. "You-"
Without needing a word, the tanned man stepped forth, moving to stand between the girl in red and the man in blue. Unlike the girl's cold rage, it could be said that his eyes were at worst, disappointed, yet mostly uncaring and cold. Kanshou and Bakuya fell into their respective places in the stance he favored as his muscles tensed for battle.
"Archer, kill Lancer," the girl in red ordered. Somewhere between 'you' and 'Archer' she had regained control of herself, at least outwardly. Archer's stance subtly changed from defense to offensive.
"So you were finally going to take me seriously?" The blue spearman complained with a snort, "Just my luck. My master's not very courageous, so I'm afraid that we'll have to fight some other day." Turning around, Lancer dismissed Gae Bolg and ran out of the school building. After jumping over the outer wall, he disappeared from their sight.
"Rin, should I chase after him?" Archer asked without leaving his spot.
Shaking her head, Rin answered, "no, you stay here Archer. Stand guard while I heal this idiot." She walked over to the fallen body.
"You can raise the dead now? It seems like my Master is just full of interesting surprises," Archer commented.
"He's not dead. Someone who could use all those mysteries... if I can heal him, then S-" Rin stopped herself before saying more.
Archer was not about to leave it at that, "is it wise to heal a magus who didn't register with the Second Owner, though? I noticed that you were surprised by him showing up through that spell."
"He didn't have to register. A magus only has to register with me if he wants permission for setting up a workshop within my territory, but someone who can traverse long distances fast enough can simply set up his workshop outside my territory and commute. And since he can use use that...that- whatever he did to show up right there, then his workshop is probably on a mountain cave somewhere. I'm just being nice, since I think Mitsuzuri likes him." Rin spoke without looking up at Archer's face, choosing to shift at the corpse that lay awkwardly in the ground.
Taking out a red pendant from a pocket, she sat in seiza besides the corpse with the pendant hanging a couple centimeters above the hole in the torso, and began to gather the magical energy stored in the pendant's gem to use it in what would essentially be a <<Revive>> spell. At that moment, a hand grabbed her in place, disrupting the spell as Rin was startled. The same female voice with metallic, or digital, undertones rang out from somewhere near the corpse.
", 「Unload」."
"What?" Rin may have been still young and inexperienced, but she still had the presence of mind to spring away from the corpse. Archer immediately took a position where he could protect most of Rin's body with his own, while allowing her space to see what was going on. They both moved further back from the "corpse".
"Be careful," Archer said. "We don't know what we are dealing with, here."
But what they were dealing with was right in front of their eyes. As they watched, the whole corpse glowed a silvery white with the glow leaving the body in the shape of sparks not unlike those that left bonfires and other medium sized fires. Every time that a spark left the body, the glow in that part stopped, returning to its original not-glowing condition everywhere. With a single exception.
The wounds in the corpse, like the bruises, scrapes and the one broken bone -a humerus- from the fall, plus the hole in the torso where the heart should be, all of them disappeared. In addition, the replaced body was not frozen in death, so his chest rose and fell in time with his breath, and his eyes soon blinked open like they were blinking the glare away.
Shirou soon stood up from the ground, finding himself a few paces away from the other two people in the school, who were looking at him with a stony face and an angry expression respectively. He opened his mouth to speak, but the girl, another student in his year in Homurabara, interrupted him before he could start.
"Emiya-kun! It's so nice to see that you're okay. I'll see you on Monday at the school's roof during lunch hour, okay?" She said, her voice sweet like honey, almost making Shirou forget what he'd earlier. But Tohsaka wasn't happy despite how she sounded. She was as angry as Shirou had initially thought she was. "Or I'll kill you."
"Wha- I mean, yes?" Shirou, who had discovered the TSAB at same age that Harry Potter received his Hogwarts letter, was frankly unnerved by the girl.
"Excellent! Then I'll be see you the day after tomorrow, Emiya-kun. Good night!" Tohsaka said, still with the same exceedingly sweet tone. Shirou's gaze strayed for a moment to the other man, who was glaring coldly at him. Shirou's expression hardened at the sight of the other man.
"Uhm..." Shirou was confused. He could understand Tohsaka not being as happy as he would be in the opposite situation, not everyone enjoyed helping other people like he did. But, Tohsaka being angry at him for not being dead? After she was going to try to save him? He simply couldn't wrap his mind around the idea.
"Boy," the man, Archer, if Shirou's somewhat flawed perception of the world around him while using Man of this World was right.
"Yes?" Shirou couldn't get a grasp on the man. Usually, if someone use a weapon, Shirou could sympathize with it enough to get a rough idea of the person's history with it. Spontaneous Sympathetic-Concept Resonance Mediated Psychometry that ended up functioning like a Focus-Enabled Magical Empathy. Technical terms that had been pushed into his head to the point that he could almost recite their definition from memory despite his incomplete understanding of them.
The problem with the Kanshou and Bakuya that Archer wielded was that they were...empty weapons. They had been forged married blades, and one would always return to the other, and the man had called them into his hands to fight Lancer just a few minutes ago, as the owner of those paired blades, but...nothing more. To be more accurate, nothing in between. It was like they had literally come to exist when Archer had needed them, with the weight of the accumulated years, but none of the history that there should have been there. And added to the unfounded mutual animosity they had going form the moment they'd crossed eyes...
Shirou couldn't get a grasp on Archer, and yet, despised him.
"What is best in life?" Tohsaka, who had been walking away, paused at the unexpected question from the man.
Shirou'd never heard the quote, or anything about it, since his access to Earth's entertainment culture was limited to what his circle of friends and family maneuvered into watching, especially Hayate-san. As a consequence, it was mostly Western blockbuster movies, anime, super heroes and anime and manga form Japan, mixed with video games from all over the world. But no Conan the Barbarian. Yet, without even a short pause to think, he answered.
"To save the innocent." There was no doubt in his mind. It was who he was. And perhaps he had been steered in a certain direction by his friends and family.
Archer snorted. Shirou's fingers tightened fractionally.
"So you're still a fool," he commented dryly, as if to himself. But loud enough for Shirou to hear, which made the teen's temper rise even more.
It was also loud enough for Tohsaka to hear, since the girl immediately spoke without looking back. "Enough, Archer! We're leaving."
Shirou just watched them walk away, and when they vanished from his sight, he simply kept staring at the last place he'd managed to see them. Intellectually, he'd known that there were other magi in Fuyuki, and that more than half of those of them that were of his age went to Homurabara. But to find out that the school idol, Tohsaka Rin, was one of the cold-hearted researchers that made up most of the Earth's magus population was kinda overwhelming.
It didn't help that Shirou had something of a crush on her, so he was currently ready to believe that Ayako was actually a Magical Girl. Or that Taiga was secretly a Sith. Or that mankind was trapped inside the Matrix and instead of magi, there were just hackers. Well, not exactly ready to believe. He'd still be surprised, while knowing from beforehand that he'd be surprised. Thankfully for his peace of mind, Lotus Blade chimed in.
"."
"ETA?" Shirou asked.
But even as he spoke, the flash of light that heralded commercial Dimensional Transfers filled the schoolyard. When it vanished, Vivio was standing there, wearing the leather jacket that Fate had given her as a gift for her last birthday. And the skirt from Shamal, the sweater from Yuuno and the boots from Vita. Shirou wondered for a moment if she was also wearing the lingerie set that she'd got from Hayate, before vanishing those thoughts from his mind. Shirou felt lucky that the cold air of the winter and the tan he'd gotten in Ramaqen hid his blush.
"Vivio!"
With a smile, Shirou walked with his arms open towards the girl, who'd shown up a couple meters away from him. The hetero-chromatic blonde smiled black widely, and jumped forwards to hug him.
"Shirou!"
They hugged, and remained holding each other for some time, before finally letting go.
"Let's go, Vivio." Never one to push his problems on other people, he was going to hold telling Vivio what had just happened until later, when they'd already arrived to his house.
"We're going to walk, Shirou?" Vivio asked.
"Oh, right. Sorry," Shirou answered rubbing the back of his head. He'd forgotten that they'd discussed the option of using Shirou's, or rather Lotus Blade's, Transport Magic to get home quickly to get their Japanese money and eat some food or order out. ", 「Load」."
The square of Summoning Magic appeared below their feet, and suddenly they were gone from the school without even a flash of light to attest for their departure.
"Shirou...how exactly did you damage your clothes so much in just one minute?"
TO BE CONTINUED...IN CHAPTER 2
There. Rin's characterization may be a little weak, but I think I pulled through, somehow. Explanations on how do Magecraft and Mana-linking, Magic Circuits and Linker Cores and Mystic Codes and Devices work and/or interact will come in the next chapter. Questions? Comments?
Originally Posted by Flere821
Bravo, Daneel*claps* Are you serious about starting a crossover though, or is this solely as a tribute?
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