Escaping Fate

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Except it isn't all translated, right? I HATE having something partially completed and then being forced to wait. Especially on something I know already I'm gonna love. Fate/Zero's anime is going to KILL me.

Quoted for truth. ;__;

[Techlet]

Well, I'm certainly not going to write Caren-route, not until I actually play F/HA. Otherwise, it'd really be just like writing Hitagi smut and that wouldn't really fit though Hitagi does make me hnnnnngggg.

Senjougahara Hitagi, wielder of Unlimited Stationery Works, invoked with the lines:

"Tsundere service."

[Arashi_Leonhart]

*twitches*

So...moe...

[Techlet]

"Don't be mistaken, Emiya-kun. It's not like I'm worried about you. But know that if you do not return, I'll never forgive you."

[mangafreak7793]

*Add Shoving a stapler in his mouth for good measure.*

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Spoiler:

Can't...look...away...from...Hitagi...now...

Dammit don't have Bakemonogatari handy right now...

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Indexed, and now with all chapters (including unreleased ones) listed. Interlude 15-1 in a while.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Special Triple Post: Tsubame Gaeshi!

AN: Yes, I made stuff up in this chapter. I’ve tried to dodge what I can when I can, though, when it comes to putting my spin on canon. Anyway.


Escaping Fate
Interlude 15-1
The Philosopher’s Stone

BGM on

Sakura worked on cleaning the dishes after the three of them had charged on out to Shinto, watching from the kitchen as Yumi surfed the channels of the television in the search for entertainment.

Really, she over-cleaned the dishes in an effort to keep her mind off of what could be going on beyond the walls of the house.

Unfortunately, within ten minutes, the dishes were about as sparkly-clean as any amount of polishing would manage. Sakura replaced her apron on its hangar and settled in next to Yumi as the girl decided on Nodame Cantabile, an anime she had been recording.

“Yumi, you gave se…Shirou the Shroud?” Sakura asked.

Yumi shrugged. “Not all of it. It was way too long for me, though, so I cut part of it off.”

Sakura shook her head. “I have a feeling someone should scold you about respecting ancient and rare things.”

“You’re not going to?”

“You might have noticed, but I’m terrible at scolding people. We’ll leave that to Rin nee-san.”

Yumi started the show, and Sakura watched alongside her, wondering why the titular character Nodame sounded familiar.*

BGM off

The sound of rattling wood suddenly drowned out all other sound, and the television went out. Sakura’s eyes went wide as she glanced about the room. “The field—!”

The boundary field surrounding the Emiya home had alerted them of danger.

Sakura pulled Yumi to her feet. “Hallway, now, and stay behind me. Tell me if you see anything behind us.”

Yumi nodded. She repressed the urge to point out that when Sakura wanted, she could sound very much like Rin.

They stepped out into the hallway and headed for the back porch, Sakura keeping an eye out at all times for trouble. She thought of the timing of this, and the likelihood of it actually being the demon—something that seemed unlikely, as she did not think such a creature would set off the alert from the boundary field. Too, she trusted that her sister and Shirou would not have let it slip past them nor let it defeat them so simply and swiftly.

BGM on

Rounding the corner, a figure stood before them, and Sakura halted so fast Yumi slid right into her shoulders in the process. “Who are you?” Sakura asked when the man made no move.

He stood there, silent, and Sakura felt her skin crawl. His hair, short, was unnaturally pale, not at all like an aged person but almost cat-whisker-like; his eyes were also a pale grey, giving him the look of a madman as he scanned over her like she were being appraised for auction.

When Yumi grabbed the back of her blouse and pulled, desperately, Sakura understood.

“Setsuka Yuushi,” Sakura said, recalling the name of Yumi’s tormentor. “You don’t belong here. Get out.”

The man stood there, staring at the two, and then reached into his pocket. “My property. You’ll return it.”

“Yumi is not your property,” Sakura said.

He withdrew a scalpel from his pocket.

“Cos-i aequalis cosh-unum!”**

Simultaneously raising her left hand and pulling Yumi down with her right, Sakura crouched and speared the intruder with her magic. Shirou and Rin’s description of Yuushi’s powers suggested that all she could do was remove the od from his body and hope for the best; grabbing something to hit him with or engaging him in a fist fight would probably not go well for her.

Especially because she abhorred violence.

She felt prana drain from the man, who pitched forward and hit the floor like a stiff mannequin.

Taking a deep breath, Sakura turned back to Yumi, who crouched on the floor behind her. “Are you alright?”

Yumi stared over Sakura’s shoulder, and Sakura felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“Secare.”

For reasons that escaped her—but she was absolutely grateful for—Sakura thought of what Shirou had described when he had explained his involvement in the Holy Grail War. She remembered how he had been stalked by Lancer in the very same location, and how he had not thought about anything but getting clear of his attacker.

Sakura scooped Yumi up in her arms and dove right through the sliding door, trying her best to put a burst of prana into her shoulder as she did so. The glass broke from the impact and both girls went tumbling out into the yard.

Pain.

Cuts from the glass pierced her body, one tearing a line right beneath her right eye and across her cheek almost all the way to her ear. Another tore into the sleeve of her blouse and cut her upper arm.

A deep gash on her back, not from glass.

“Sakura-nee!” Yumi cried.

Sakura had dropped Yumi, though the girl looked unhurt. With little thought, she reached up, took Yumi’s hand, pulled them both upright, and bolted for the house entryway.

BGM off



Yuushi watched them go, still shuddering from the drain of prana.

Shuddering in delight.

It works, it works, it works! This is brilliant, so perfect a design!

He mentally rearranged his interior structure, like reordering the same chemicals that made up a compound to go in a different order, or like removing the stone blocks that made up a building’s foundation and then placing them back under in a different order…

Like removing the organs, then returning them in a different order.

Prana.

Life.

He had the design, so perfect, so…

Sublime.

With a new circuit in place, he palmed his scalpel and gave chase.



BGM on

“Sakura-nee!”

Sakura tried desperately to quell the tearing pain she felt in her back, arm, and cheek. Upon nearing the intersection that led alternatively to Ryuudou Temple, the school, and the shopping district, she pulled Yumi in behind one house off to the side, a house she rarely saw occupied when she went by in the mornings. Panting, more from pain, she cradled her arm and finally looked down to see the red now staining her sleeve.

Yumi took the waistcoat she wore off and put it around Sakura’s shoulders. “What happened?” she asked, though Sakura could make out the distancing she felt in the question. It was probably just too much for the girl to process, all of what had happened earlier and now the addition of the one person she truly feared. Anything that came out of her now would probably sound extremely logical and remote.

“It…I’m not sure,” Sakura admitted. “That should’ve pulled enough prana out of his body at once to make him pass out.” She shook a little. “I’m really no good with other magi, though…it might have gone wrong.”

“What do we do now?”

Cringing as she put her arms through the vest and buttoned it tightly to her—not difficult, as Yumi was many sizes smaller than she was—Sakura moaned, “We should try and find a safe place and call senpai and nee-san.” She shook her head. “No, a phone call could distract them…um.” She shivered a little, and hoped that she wasn’t starting to feel the effects of shock. “That man, they said he does things…I don’t know of anything to stop him myself.”

Yumi nodded. “I don’t think we have any choice. Shirou and Rin would be angry with us if we didn’t come to them.”

Sakura nodded wearily. She was too pained and unfocused to make any kind of argument.

Glancing out from behind the house back up the street, Yumi now pulled Sakura out as they raced toward the bridge and Shinto.

BGM off



BGM on

Yuushi caught sight of them, and hurried his pace. He tried his best, though, not to look like he was chasing after them, as it was daylight and people might be suspicious if they saw first a set of girls running, then a man chasing after them.

It hardly mattered, though.

Now, he knew, that older girl was no match for him. Even if she could drain him of his current od—

He had spares.

He was many times the magus she was.

Literally.

And when he had the test subject back, he would be able to show it to the Association…

Dissect it, remove it, copy it, emulate it, destroy it, whatever it took—

Designated Philosopher or not, he would be able to show them his work without further sacrifice to himself.

BGM off


Escaping Fate, Interlude 15-1, Out


*Ayako Kawasumi, gyabo. I ask of you, are you my seiyuu?

**Forgive my Latin. Spell invocation messing with a complex logarithm equation. Whatever the hell that is. My schooling is in English, and I’m totally cool with pulling something out of nowhere if it has to do with numbers.

[alguLoD]

Heh.

I've always been surprised that no-one's ever thought to weaponize or further expand upon Shirou's ability to create fake circuits - which if I'm guessing correctly is basically what you're doing here with Yuushi?

[Techlet]

Ho man. The bastard's back. I wish he'd get a messy death.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Oh God, Yuushi's back.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

I've always been surprised that no-one's ever thought to weaponize or further expand upon Shirou's ability to create fake circuits - which if I'm guessing correctly is basically what you're doing here with Yuushi?

Not exactly...

[ringlhach]

I don't think they're fake so much as in a magazine, like bullets. They're all real, it's just that he has a set amount that he can actively use at a time, and while he's using those, the others are either dormant or recharging. [/WAG]

[alguLoD]

... Well, that'd certainly be in keeping with Nasu's tendency to introduce ludicrously powerful h4x abilities whenever he felt like it.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Also, now, slowly going through and adding a soundtrack. Have the first two posts done, will get to them all eventually.

[Pata Hikari]

Pretty cool.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

ArrrggdoneIhavenolife

Also, I hate myself for what I put in Back to Back. But I couldn't help it.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Escaping Fate
Chapter 16
Shooting Hundred Heads


BGM on

It lurked in the shadows of the forest.

The area surrounding the graveyard was unfortunately isolated from the rest of town by numerous trees. The only saving grace it seemed was that Illya’s grave was in plain sight from the road leading up to the Church, and foot traffic there was, while irregular, present.

The beast was beyond, out of sight, though even I could feel its malice.

“Why isn’t it just charging in?” I asked. “Should it have awareness like that, to be cautious?”

“It has awareness,” Caren said. “But usually they react viscerally, on pure emotion. This…is strange.”

I’m not sure, but…

“Like it’s waiting for us,” Tohsaka said, reading my thoughts.

Caren nodded. She fingered a set of Black Keys and glanced back toward the street. “To have form, it is already strong enough to warp the minds of any passerby and even possess them. But this is acting…unlike what it should be. The demon image of children, of minds like Yumi and those before her should act like one. A monster, a terror.”

But there it waited, shadow in the shadows, still meters beyond the clearing we stood in.

BGM off



It felt their presence.

Rin Tohsaka. Shirou Emiya.

It bore his malice.

Zouken Matou.

It suffered their desires.

Numerous, from nearly adults to barely teenagers.

It sensed her magic.

Ilyasviel von Einzbern. The Grail of the Third Magic.

It wanted it all.

But the malice kept it and the desires deemed it.

The most dangerous one and the most irrelevant one.

Caren Ortensia. The memories of Yumi recalled out her name.

Kill her.



BGM on

As Caren stepped forward, the shadows moved.

“Scatter!” Tohsaka shouted.

Caren went to my left, Tohsaka right. I made a charge for the shadow down the middle, bringing the anti-demon Shamshir-e to mind—

Before my eyes, the shadows seemed to grow, take shape, and shot out of the cover of summer canopy.

An undulating mass of darkness, textured, like black static given shape.

It rose like a wave and rushed past, completely ignoring me and charging Caren. With a single bound, it was beyond my reach, leaking something that smelled like sulfur burning the grass in its wake.

The priestess tossed two handfuls of blades into the mass, which crunched and screeched like dying cicadas.

“Dammit!” I tried twisting around, Tracing Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar and planting it in the ground, bracing my foot against the flat. I kicked off from the blade and pulled, dashing at the shadow’s mass—

Caren tried to jump clear, but the darkness consumed her.

It swarmed her.

It looked…

“And knowing who your old man was doesn’t change that, you know. Maybe, in spite of that, I’d want to doubly make sure you’re alright.”

For a brief moment, I thought of Kirei Kotomine, smirking, standing over the darkness of Angra Mainyu as it consumed his daughter—

“Shirou!” Tohsaka called.

I spared a glance her way: she had ascended a tree at the edge of the clearing and was now a good four meters above me, giving her a clear view of what was going on. She raised her hand and I saw the glint of color between her fingertips.

“Neun, Acht, Sieben! Stil, schießt Beschießen, Erschie Ssung!”

A sense of déjà vu overwhelmed me, recalling a time when Tohsaka jumped from a tree with those exact same foreign words.

Ice rained down on the darkness before us, and as I moved in, raising the emerald-studded sword in my hands, I could see it.

This was not just amorphous shadow, but tiny shadows amidst one another.

Tohsaka’s spell froze some in place, and I cut what was frozen with the scimitar glinting green. The shadows flinched and undulated, shifting away from the conception of their bane, and from within their grasp I saw the flash of white hair, the faint pale skin of a hand.

I cut a swath, and reached as far in as I could.

“Caren!”

Unable to make it completely in, I was relieved when I saw Caren’s hand reach out for mine, struggling against the wave of black that separated us. The mass was ugly, horrible, like bugs swarming, crawling and rolling and—

Fangs from within and fangs from without suddenly opened, as if the mass formed a giant mouth with fangs, and each individual worming shadow bared fangs of their own. Even without eyes, they seemed to look at me eagerly, salivating, ready to consume and feast.

No.

“The horned demon’s fang cries out in agony…”

The squealing masses all seemed to silence in disbelief.

I flooded prana into the scimitar in my hand, and did what I could to Reinforce my body—

Boom.

BGM off



The blast was nowhere near the level of Caladbolg, for which I was thankful. As an anti-demonic weapon, Shamshir-e was built around the cutting of elemental creatures, not material ones, so Breaking it was probably more akin to a prana burst than an actual explosion. Still, I felt pain tear into my hand and arm and enough of a push that I not only caught Caren’s arm with my other arm, but slammed full-force into her. We were flung completely through the screaming masses of shadows and out the other side, tumbling further into the graveyard.

“AGHHHHH!” I heard myself scream.

In the haze of pain, I could not help but think that was a bad omen.

My eyes opened to the clear blue sky, as if it were mocking the horrific pain I felt in my left arm. I forced myself to look down, first to check on Caren, who was sprawled just beyond my reach, and I felt relief to see her still whole, still breathing.

Then my arm, which, as I expected, now looked something more like Gae Bolg, blood red and thorny. Thankfully, still whole as well.

I glanced at the shadow, which now resembled a piece of modern art: textured black wave with a huge hollow circle of negative space smack in the middle of its body.

“Shirou!” I heard Tohsaka’s voice again.

When I looked her way, she was not looking at the demon. Instead, she was looking horrified toward the road, and I thought maybe someone had spotted us. I had, after all, just caused a grenade explosion in the morning hours of a weekday. I followed her gaze back to the road—

Sakura and Yumi stood there. Sakura had a deep gash along her face.

I staggered to my hands and knees, wincing as my left arm took on weight and jabbed every nerve in my shoulder with the sensation of a thousand needles. I groaned and tried to wobble in Caren’s direction to see if she was even conscious.

And found her staring up at the sky, hands clasped together, saying something in what I assumed was Latin.

She was praying.

…Well, at least she wasn’t a fake priestess, I suppose.

“You’re crazy, Shirou,” Caren finally said in words I could understand. In fact, I understood them better than most, since I often got those exact words in that exact combination. “And there’s ringing in my ears.”

Tohsaka made it to us and immediately grabbed Caren, pulling her up. “It’s moving again!” she warned.

BGM on

I glanced back to find the black mass reconstituting, filling in on itself to reform the mass it lost. Something about its tiny shapes, though, made me turn back to look over my shoulder, and I saw Sakura now with her attention on it—

The absolute terror in her eyes, with the blood running down her cheek a distorted rendition of tears, and it hit me.

It had awareness greater than a mere demon to terrorize and distort.

Caren said she thought it had been on the residential side of town first, and then it had come here.

Like bugs crawling over one another—

Or worms.

This thing, this demon, had consumed upon darkness before coming here.

The sensation of my blood chilling was enough to get my mind off the pain in my arm, and I pulled myself upright. “What happened?!” I shouted Sakura and Yumi’s way.

Sakura tore her eyes off the amorphous thing. “Setsuka Yuushi attacked us!”

I heard Tohsaka make a guttural sound that I’d never heard from her before as she pulled Caren up and put the priestess’ arm around her shoulders. “Bastard. Should’ve crawled under a rock where nobody’d find him.”

“Shirou!” Yumi shouted.

Even before turning, I knew that the shadow had returned to a previous, unnervingly monstrous sight. Flexing my left hand—it still moved, thankfully—I planted myself between the girls and the demon-turned-demon. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Shirou, you can’t do that when saying let’s,” Rin hissed.

Sakura and Yumi made it to us, and with a closer look it was readily apparent that Sakura had more than just a cut face. “He attacked us right after you left…I think we lost him just before crossing the bridge,” Yumi said.

A magus that attacked in broad daylight, and a demon ready to do the same. We had to get away from here; even the church was just not isolated enough.

“Einzbern Castle,” Tohsaka said, again reading my mind. “A taxi will be faster than any magus is on foot. At least until we get to the forest edge.”

The mass of shadows withdrew upon itself, like the tide of the sea withdrawing before a great wave.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”

Yumi pulled at Sakura’s hand and Tohsaka, with a much put-upon sigh, half-carried Caren. They took toward the street and down toward Shinto, where they could find a car.

I stared at the writhing blackness, and shook my head.

Archers suited for independent action, huh?

BGM off



The extra got away.

Shirou Emiya still here.

Then…

Malice rose up to control malice, and the desire to kill consumed it.



BGM on

Once more, looking less like a monster and more like a wave of consumption, the demon reared back and prepared to strike.

“Removing stops.”

If this was infused with Crest Worms, I was going to have to do more than swing an anti-demonic sword at it.

If this was now an extension of Zouken Matou, I was going to have to shoot it a hundredfold times.

I charged right past the creature as it swept in at me, ducking just below an arm-like wave that tried to clothesline me as I did so. I ran as hard as I could for the trees, and the thing made the same acidic-oozing noise as it moved across the grass after me, now chirping like a perverted sense of laughter.

Sprinting between trees, I prepared them within my mind’s eye.
Demon-Zouken-worm-shadow-mass-creature gave chase, dividing and swaying itself between the narrower confines of the forest, avoiding the tree trunks and masses of bushes that sought to get into its way.

The Greek demigod might have had a bow to shoot many times at once, and heated swords to cauterize stumps, but I did not. I was also not a Greek hero.

I was Japanese.

“Full Trace, release!”

The god Susanoo defeated the Orochi by bringing its heads through gates by which he could easily cut them. Out in the open, the demon could hit me from any angle, but between trees and foliage, it was limited in how it could move and what direction it could take.

I didn’t have the power to do it all at once, so I would have to work my way down systematically.

Blades formed and shot out as my mind released them, slamming into the creature as it passed by every tree, wove past every bush and thicket. I kept imagining Gilgamesh as he rained terror down on Saber and I, and for a moment I felt like I could perhaps thank the King of Heroes.

Moment over.

The demon screeched with each blade thrust into its mass, not slowing but bleeding something sulfurous each time. I groaned with each blade, the drain of prana on top of running at full speed making me feel light-headed. Even with recovery time and help, this was just never going to be something I got used to, even if each time I brought a sword to mind, it became easier and easier to shift from thought to seeming.

I glanced over my shoulder to see the demon narrowing itself, now no longer a wave but a jet of liquid, trying to make its profile more difficult to strike. The way its body undulated made it look even more like a giant worm made up of worms, and I felt bile rise into my throat.

No, this time, you were going to be the one fucked.

I kept up the barrage, blades flying out of the sky to strike the demon, cut its body, pierce each and every one of those fanged mouths—

“The fourth tail is my domain.”

Tracing the bow in one hand, I brought that same legend to mind. It might even delay this thing further, though I doubt I could make it destroy the demon completely.

And when the demon lobbed part of itself at me, fanged terrors of shadow and all, I knew I would have to.

I blunted one aside with the bow and slashed at another two with the sword, then made for a narrower path. I would have to hit it head-on…

“Take the fire of my light into battle with beasts—”

It was not the katana so many seemed to associate it with, but the tsurugi of old, like a thicker, longer Chinese Jian. I nocked it to the bow, took a deep breath—

Another gibbering mass of shadow flew just over my head, and I leapt up in its wake, spinning in place.

“Kusanagi!”

And from the fourth tail of that serpent in the legend, Susanoo took a sword that cut the grass with arcs of wind.

Wind twisted about the sword as it flew, hard enough to propel me back meters before I tumbled to the ground and crashed into the bush. I watched with detached interest, though, as it embedded right into the front tip of the demon’s throng and, instead of cutting—

Sent wind into the shuddering darkness.

BGM off

The mass pancaked as the force of the gale thrust the demon’s form flat and back the way we had come. It spun awkwardly in the air and then soared like a wobbled Frisbee, then out of my line of sight as the forest enveloped it.

I moaned. Out of prana. Again.

Coughing once into the dirt, I picked myself up—and regretted it. The pain in my left arm, no longer shunted aside by the more immediate concern of death to the rest of me, now shot right up my neck in full force. I felt something in me pop, heard something like the draining of water in a plugged ear sound off deep in the back of my head, and I shuddered.

“Uuuaaahh…”

I gripped my left arm and tried to get my eyes to focus.

At least, this time, I could limp back on my own.



The darkness gathered unto itself, piecing itself together, until it could swim amidst itself as before.

Shirou Emiya.

The name sounded like whispers amidst the fanged worms and fanged shade made up of worms.

It felt it, too, now, from him, that same taint as the body in the graveyard.

But stronger, pure.

The graveyard was no more than a faint echo. But Shirou Emiya…

The darkness outside of him was complete. Full. Powerful.

If the darkness could consume that darkness, it would be invincible.

Shirou Emiya stood between it and its malice, its desire—

But something troubled the malice, while exciting the desire…

If the darkness around him was so great—

How did the light within survive?


Escaping Fate, Shooting Hundred Heads, End


...Thought I meant something else by the title, huh?

[Neir]

Fucking BADASS.

[Bloble]

It works.

It's not NINE LIVES BLADEWORKS but it works.