Back, months when I conceptualized this, I did think about using Nine Lives here, but it really wasn't for anything more than to sound cool and give another shoutout to HF. Killing nine times would've, well, killed nine worms or something, but not done much more. I thought this might be better to make it sound a little more like the sort of strategy Heroic Spirit EMIYA would've conjured up though.
Localizationing stuff
True. At least it was original, and good.Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
I liked it.
Man that was badass.
I like all the "activation phrases" you've given to the swords.
Hopefully they sound somewhat awkwardly "translated," just like "My bone twists into madness."
And yeah, Shirou dropping the f-bomb (though in Japanese, it would be more like "you'll be the one done in") here is meant to be his Black Lagoon Rock moment. Holy shit, the nice guy just swore!
I hope that, for the briefest of moments, somebody at least thought I might off Caren. Or that I still might off someone else...
Localizationing stuff
I have just read GAR.
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
Okay, I had been following this fic for some time in FF.net, and the only reason I didn't post anything before, either here or in FF.net is because I'm a lazy bum from time to time (and a severe lack of time U_U). But I had to post something after this chapter. It's simply superb. The fighting scene, the (mandatory) reference to Herc and Ninelives, the use of Kusanagi and the right description of the sword¹... Magnificent.
Now we need a badass fight between Rin and Setsuka, in the next chapter. If only because Shirou is too tired, and Caren should be damaged enough to not be her fight this time.
¹Like you (I assume), I'm tired of people thinking about it as a katana, instead of its true form. Again, I was born in a city known for its swords, so it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine to be that acurate with the swords)
Spoiler:
I'm a sword nut like Shirou, so yeah, pet peeve for me too. To the degree that I may end up posting drawings of the swords I've added to Shirou's arsenal in this story, because I sketch out the sword image before writing about it.
Localizationing stuff
I'd like to see those.
Ditto.
Fate/Stay Night: Life is an Endless Dream Chapter 12: Settling into place
Tsukihime: Role Revert Part 10: Were you here the whole time?
Fate + Tsuki: Slayer/Savior Part 1: Forge/Assassin
Pata Hikari's Tsukihime Short stories: Lastest story: A Midnight Dreary
Same here.
Spoiler:
I like swords. And drawings. And drawings of swords.
SHARE
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
Will share pictures at the end of the story, maybe going back and inserting links to them when appropriate.
AN: Yes, releases be machinegunning at you as we near the end and I get excited to do the climax. Also, I have fully thought up Fate/Far Side and maybe want to get to that in the near future.
Escaping Fate
Chapter 17
Strategy Meeting
The taxi driver regarded me oddly, first at my injured and sleeveless arm, then when I asked him to take me to the edge of the forest surrounding Fuyuki. He didn’t complain, though, as I paid fine and, well, I must have looked exhausted enough to earn some sympathy.
Trudging through the forest to get to the castle while beat, though, was a real painful experience. I felt dizziness and nausea come in waves, and tripped a couple of times, the first time even falling right onto my left arm. It took me that shock to remember Yumi had given me bandages, and when I found a suitable place to rest, wrapped my arm in the red bandage.
And immediately felt better.
I don’t know what, if anything Yumi did to it, but something about it seemed to give me a second wind. Though I still felt bone sore and in need of a nap, it no longer felt like every sound was constantly jabbing me in the brainstem.
I glanced around, and laughed. The pain had hazed my mind so much that I hadn’t even realized where it was I had stumbled into until now.
“Hah, I could really use that prana now,” I chuckled.
By the time I had the Einzbern castle-mansion in sight, I was actually jogging at a fairly decent clip, though even still it was nearing sundown. I carefully pushed the doors open and, climbing over the rubble still present in the main hall, ascended the stairs and made for the bedrooms that faced the same direction as the entryway. Tohsaka would be keeping watch from there and she might have made Sakura and Caren lie down and get some rest.
I opened the first door and got a pillow to the face.
“You idiot,” Tohsaka complained, clearly the instigator of the throw, sitting at the foot of the bed. You would think that, after getting used to waking her in the morning and getting this in response, I would have known to duck. “You should’ve phoned Yumi or Sakura to let us know you were okay!”
I could not help but stare at Tohsaka in surprise. She was giving me a lecture that included the use of technology? What strange world have I stumbled into now? “Reception in the forest doesn’t work, so you’d never have been able to get any bars out here anyway.”
“Reception? Bars?” Tohsaka asked, confused.
Ah, better.
Sakura and Caren were on the oversized bed in the room, though Caren was fast asleep. She had her hands together beneath her cheek, in a very obvious I-am-sleeping-like-a-child pose. Did she do that on purpose? Sakura, on the other hand, was sitting up and wore new clothing. “Are you alright?” I asked her.
She nodded. “The cuts weren’t as deep as I thought. We treated everything and I took a nap, so I’m feeling much better.” The cut on her cheek was closed, though she brushed her fingers against it. “Nothing I can’t handle, senpai.”
Yumi was sitting on the floor to the other side of the bed, staring out the window, her head peeking out just beyond Sakura’s legs. “Yumi?”
“Unhurt,” she reported.
I sighed. This girl really needed to stop bottling up everything, if recent events were any indication. I rounded the bed and found her also wearing new clothing. “Where did you find that?” I asked.
BGM on
Yumi shrugged. She had apparently decided to replace the waistcoat that was now stained with Sakura’s blood. This one had a male cut and looked like it belonged under a suit blazer rather than as a single piece. “It was in one of the room closets here. I went exploring.”
It explained that and Sakura’s new clothing, I guess. I looked her over carefully, feeling what was left unsaid there: to try and get my mind off things.
“It feels nice. It feels like Shirou,” she said, quieter.
I crouched down next to her, fingering the bandage around my arm. “An Addition?”
“Something like that,” Yumi said. “When I put it on…it feels like what Shirou feels. When you’re right here, like this.”
“That’s good…I guess,” I said, smiling.
BGM off
“Anyway,” Tohsaka said, rounding on me and staring down, arms crossed, “I rather doubt it, but, did you kill it?”
I felt my eyebrow twitch. I know I’m no Heroic Spirit, but, still, qualifying it like that stung a little. “Doubtful. Probably only served to make it angry, to be honest.”
“…And?”
I could feel the unasked question and glanced up at Sakura, feeling the overwhelming urge to hold her. Thinking about her, thrown into that mass of cackling evil every night—
When I had punched Shinji, all those years ago for hurting his little sister, I had wondered what made her still seek out the good in him. I knew that, for me, it was because I wanted to feel that people like Shinji, despite their problems, could still be saved, and could still find a way to live in peace. But the part of me that empathized, that put me in her shoes, wondered how, without my sort of detachment, one could not come to just hate him utterly.
I think maybe I got it now: you live in a darkness that utterly bleak, you lose sight of all other darkness, big and small. It just becomes one giant blur of the same thing. Any light, any flicker of good beyond it…
Must be the only thing you see.
“I’m pretty sure it was him, Zouken Matou. Maybe that’s why it was waiting, calculating. Certainly seemed to focus its attention one at a time, not like a demon would,” I said.
Sakura shuddered. “I thought…he was gone for good. The times I’ve gone back, it seemed like…he was silent. Never showed himself before me again. I thought you were the reason why, senpai.”
I nodded. I had thought so too. Illya had seemed to believe he was completely docile, in any case.
BGM on
“The demon would seek familiar ground,” Caren said suddenly, rolling over to look at us. I could make her out over Sakura’s knee and glared, wondering if she had been feigning sleep the entire time or truly had been woken to our talk. “If this Zouken Matou is familiar to you, Sakura-san, and a thing of darkness and evil, it is understandable that the demon would sniff him out.”
Not that sniffing him out was difficult, as he was quite the stench. “But then, which one is in control? The demon, or Zouken?”
“One that accepts possession is neither, as they become one in the same,” Caren said. “Much as Yumi, who says she feels she is like multiple people within one body, it would be the same for this. Yumi is still Yumi, a unique existence, but also more than what she was before. This Zouken would be the same.”
Yumi stood, looking ready to leave, possibly overwhelmed at that statement, but Sakura quickly reached out to pull the girl onto the bed. Like a little child, she embraced Yumi until the girl relented, putting her head in Sakura’s lap.
I’m not sure I wanted to know what kind of internal struggle must have occurred in her head at that point, but I was glad at which one won. “And what about Yuushi?”
Tohsaka scowled. “We were talking about that when you arrived. Sakura tried to drain him of prana, but it didn’t work.”
“Like you did with those dragon-demon-things?” I asked.
Sakura nodded, brushing her hand through Yumi’s hair. It looked very, well, motherly, I suppose you could say, though I’d never actually seen anyone do such a thing or remember if my mother had done anything likewise. “I felt it drain, but he suddenly had more, like a second wind. I can’t actually absorb that much without hurting myself.”
Like a second wind? I guess I’ve somewhat done that in the past, but I’ve actually risked draining my entire life away doing so, and trained magi avoid that like the plague. They’re generally smart enough to come up with contingency plans that do not involve my level of stupidity.
Or…
Wait.
“Like…additional prana?” I asked.
Yumi’s head came up at that, and she looked at me in suspicion.
Tohsaka got it immediately. “We need to go back to that orphanage.”
Sakura looked confused. “Why? Didn’t you take and destroy his research?”
“Yes, but that’s not why. If he’s been experimenting on himself, he might have used the place again before coming after us.” Tohsaka looked absolutely pissed, now. “And if what we’re thinking is right, we’re going to have to be the ones to attack him.”
Well, I understood that we would want to check the orphanage, but not that last part. “Why attack him? He’s coming after us, isn’t he?”
“Shirou, think about it.” Tohsaka did not look to Yumi, but her eyes briefly darted that way before looking back to me.
If Yuushi had taken his knowledge, had applied it to himself, he might be, in fact, like Yumi, with multiple souls tethered to his own, making for additional magical circuits. It explained why Yumi seemed to have more than average prana, and why she was irregular at utilizing it; Yuushi, on the other hand, with training, be able to organize it enough within himself to work everything out fine and efficiently. It would also mean that when Sakura said she drained him, she was merely draining one set of circuits, and he was simply moving on to the next set, like he had multiple tanks of gas.
For an immediate concern, it meant he must have killed more people and has many times the amount of prana to the average magus. And while that might not be a concern to someone like Tohsaka, if he could outlast anything I threw at him, it nailed one of the few advantages I had against the average magus in that I was within a mere acceptable range of output. That demon, for instance, was much harder than a magus, simply—
Oh. Oh that was bad.
It must have shown on my face, because Tohsaka nodded, but it was Caren who spoke up. “So, this Setsuka Yuushi could give birth to another demon.”
Yumi groaned from Sakura’s lap.
“Then we need to definitely check his place out and confront him. First, even, if Zouken is going to play hide-and-seek with us,” Tohsaka said.
I nodded in agreement. “Now? All of us?”
“Yes. I’m going to go raid the cellar here to see if I can’t find some canned or preserved food first, and then we should go,” Tohsaka said.
“I will get water,” Caren said. “Five minutes.”
BGM off
When they had left, I sat up on the bed with Sakura and Yumi, briefly brushing at Yumi’s hair as well. “Sorry, for all this,” I said, though I’m not really sure who I was apologizing to.
BGM on
“It…really did look like it,” Sakura said. She shuddered at the memory of the demon. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to keep returning to that.”
I put my arm around her, cradling her head and pulling her against my shoulder. Despite the shaking, though, I saw her fist clench, and could not help but smile a tiny bit.
Allies of justice didn’t fix what was wrong. They just cleaned up afterward.
I may not be able to save any of them from the terror or sadness they endured, but, maybe…
I could do right by them here, now.
When Tohsaka and Caren returned to gather us, Tohsaka caught my gaze, and she smiled at the image we presented to her, seemingly despite herself.
BGM off
Escaping Fate, Strategy Meeting, End
Last edited by Arashi_Leonhart; July 4th, 2012 at 12:00 PM.
Localizationing stuff
Ah, nostalgia. Thy name be "Ever-present Feeling ~ Kie nai Omoi 消えない想い ".
That made for a cute image at the end.
Not much else to comment on, this being the calm before the storm and all.
Yep,people die when they are killedstories build up when they approach a climax.
Al likes climaxing...wait.
AN: No, Ryougi will not be showing up to shank a bitch, despite the title. Maybe some other time…
Escaping Fate
Chapter 18
Garden of Sins
She stood there, motionless, staring paradoxically at nothing and everything at the same time.
She did not really know what to expect when asking to be shown this place. Fear, revulsion, anger, sadness…they were all amorphous ideas and concepts rather than a solid feeling when she associated it with expectation.
As the electricity in the facility no longer worked, Yumi had to Alter a piece of wood, giving an eerie glow to see by.
The room was the color of gunmetal, gray and dull from wear, now painted faintly green by the firefly light in Yumi’s hand. Counters had various surgical tools and medicinal supplies, now in disarray and gathering cobwebs. A single table sat in the center of the room; a box of surgical gloves the only thing atop it. Rust and blood stains coated it and the floor surrounding it, though it smelled as antiseptic as any hospital. A portable light hung over it, more reminiscent of an interrogator’s device than a tool of surgery.
BGM on
She could not remember what she had thought upon seeing this place for the first time, all those years ago. She had been anxious, and scared, and excited, told she had been adopted; her things packed away and shipped off already. She had wondered what her family would be like, if her new mom would be like what she remembered of her birth mom, if she would have siblings.
Yuushi-san had told her she would be getting a quick examination before heading out.
He continued to tell her that in the days that followed.
The pain, of course, was not physical. At first, even though she had watched him cut so deeply into her, there was no pain, since the anesthetic was powerful. But when he had changed the direction of his cuts, when somehow, it felt like he was piercing her from the inside-out, it had hurt. It had hurt like being told by someone that they hated her, or that she was truly a nothing that nobody would ever love again.
It hurt like the lie, “Only a little bit more, and then the examination will be over.”
It hurt like the truth, that it would not be “a little bit more.” That there was no family, and she would not be leaving this place.
She looked at it now, where she should have died, where she had died and something else, something too much, too full, had taken her place.
She hated it.
Cursed it.
Wanted it dead.
She smashed the stick into the table and swept everything onto the ground. She picked up the lamp and flung it across the room, where it crashed into empty vials and plastic boxes. She slapped her hands atop the table and flooded it with prana until the surface had the consistency of molding clay, then pulled at it until it tore apart from the table’s center.
When arms seized her by the waist and shoulders, she wrestled with them, but could not escape. She screamed and growled at everything until her throat was hoarse and her muscles sore.
She didn’t cry, didn’t wail, didn’t feel like breaking down, and she wondered why.
Instead, she felt tears hit her cheeks, and looked up to find Rin and Sakura, Rin with her arms locked around her, Sakura kneeling just to the side. Rin was crying, and Sakura looked as stoic as Yumi had ever seen.
“Why are you crying?” Yumi scratched out.
“Because you aren’t,” Rin said.
Yumi looked up at Sakura. “Why are you…strong?” she asked, unable to find the right words.
Sakura said. “So you can be weak.”
BGM off
I watched the girls calm Yumi, watched as our charge slowly came down from her fit and willingly stay in Tohsaka’s arms. I considered going in to see if I could help, but, well…
In the end, I was still pretty bad at this. I never knew what kind of face I needed to show Yumi; Sakura did, and Tohsaka was generally better at it than I was.
There were signs that Yuushi had been here, though he had not used that room again. A boundary field had been erected again—I had once more used Joyeuse’s shifting magical state to cut through it—and we actually found a few supplies of food and drink in the regular office Yuushi had used as “proprietor” of the orphanage. What was disturbing instead was he had apparently been doing his research on us, as Tohsaka had found photographs of my house and an old, once-was-trashed piece of paper listing Sakura’s working hours. From what we could tell, he had been staking the place out and waited until he saw Tohsaka and I leave to enter the house. He probably hadn’t actually thought Sakura and Yumi were still home, since Yumi should have been at school and Sakura at work.
A magus that did his homework could be a very dangerous threat. A magus that did his homework but had terrible timing could be an even bigger threat.
That’s not even considering what this demon-Zouken Matou hybrid could do. I’m not sure I had anything capable of destroying thousands of little demons instead of one centralized demon. If I Broke Calabolg it might work, but the secondary energy from the explosion was not actually a great amount and for the most part it was confined to a space more suitable against a single target or small area.
Excalibur…the times I had tried, it had been nothing short of disastrous. It was bad, terrible as even an imitation. And even if I could make it, it was impossible for me to generate the prana necessary to use it like Saber did.
I wonder what she would do, in this situation.
I climbed out of the underground facility and, though it had been approaching dark when we got here, was surprised to find it completely twilight. Caren stood at the doorway, eyes darting about the place. “Anything?”
Caren shook her head. “All’s been silent.” She glanced back the way I had come from. “How is she?”
“Better, I hope.” Seeing Yumi explode like that had once again made me realize how much she must be bottling up. I hoped we could be there for her when she had fits of other things than anger, too. “Yuushi hasn’t been experimenting here. I really don’t want to think he’s gone and killed more people elsewhere…that would be my fault for letting him go.”
The white-haired priestess pulled one of the bandage ends at my arm and turned me to look at her. “No. Shirou, it is not wrong to hope that someone could find repentance. And your responsibility was to those around you, here. It is not your fault that others lost track of him.” She raised her chin. “If anything, you should be angry with me, as I was the one to dictate how he be transported.”
I was not going to play a blame-game with anyone. “Let’s not go there. I don’t want to be angry with anyone, really.”
Caren smiled. “I know.”
I looked around at the abandoned orphanage, shaking my head. Kudzu had overtaken much of the landscaping and Japanese ivy had run rampant up to the first floor windows of the main building. In another decade or two, I wouldn’t be surprised if it resembled the ruined building outside the Einzbern castle.
Caren was watching me closely, and I decided I would not reminisce on what had happened during that time.
BGM on
We waited to see if Yuushi would come, Sakura and Yumi inside the main building on the second floor, Tohsaka and Caren around the sides of the administrator’s building. I ended up climbing onto the roof and Reinforcing my eyes in an attempt to glimpse the man if he returned, though in the darkness it would probably only let me notice movement in the bush as opposed to spotting him outright.
Though, even after it had passed one in the morning, nothing had happened, and I wondered if he was attempting to stake out my place instead. In which case, this would be a very long waiting game. The demon, perhaps, would come for us instead, though I’m not sure if it had a way to track us.
“Shirou?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Yumi staring up at me from the roof access hatch, her eyes and little else peeking out at me. I smirked at her. “Expect me to play whack-a-mole? Come up if you want to talk.”
She did so, carefully brushing her waistcoat and skirt off, then came to kneel down next to me. Unlike what I expected, with her sitting there for a while organizing her thoughts, she just came out and said what was on her mind. “You once told me you wanted to save everyone.”
I nodded. “I did.”
“I…” she frowned, then shook her head. “Why couldn’t you save everyone before me?”
I understood that it wasn’t an accusatory question, just, one that she couldn’t wrap her head around. I understood survivor’s guilt a great deal more than the average person, probably. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t. But…I’m not an ally of justice, not a hero like on television or in books. I’m just a human that wants to be.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap, and she said, “I lied earlier.”
“About what?”
“This doesn’t feel exactly like you,” she said, pulling at her waistcoat. “They feel…like you do when you Trace that one sword. Saber’s sword.”
I gave her what Tohsaka often called my “dorky grin”—something she cited she wanted to wipe off my face every time I did it, because it looked stupid or something. “Oh?”
“I think…” her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Shirou should already think of himself as a hero. He saved Saber, right?”
I chuckled. “I highly doubt that.”
“And that means he saved all the people Saber saved, right?”
My brows probably furrowed at that. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Yumi looked up at me, and something from her gaze was different from only a moment ago, somehow, the difference beyond anything I could hope to use words and define. It wasn’t hopeful, or even inspired, nor determined…
Just…
“If I have in me everybody else…if I live the life they never could…and you saved me, doesn’t that mean, they were saved too?”
“I don’t need the Holy Grail. I can’t stray from my path for the people I’ve left behind.”
And Saber…had accepted those words.
I cocked my head at Yumi, staring at her, feeling a little weird. For someone who never met Saber, she certainly seemed to, I don’t know, get her.
BGM off
“Shirou!” came Tohsaka’s voice from the ground level.
I motioned silently for Yumi to crawl back the way she had come, then crouched low and peeked out over the edge of the building. Tohsaka and Caren both were there, half behind the cover of the administrator’s building. I followed their line of sight and saw him, the figure of a man, white hair apparent even in the dimness of the night sky.
BGM on
“I see I once again have intruders on my property,” he called out.
“Not your property anymore,” Tohsaka retorted. Even from this distance and in the darkness, I could see the signs of her palming the last jewel she had, still not anywhere near the power of ones used during the war, but still dangerous to a magus like Yuushi. “I’d suggest you get out now, while you still can.”
“Not talking about the lands,” Yuushi said. “I’m talking about her!” and pointed up to the second story of the building beneath me, where Yumi would be returning to Sakura’s side.
Tohsaka lobbed the jewel in his direction.
At the same time, an arc of golden light bounded out from him, surrounding him in a rotating circle of energy. The jewel struck the edge of the light and exploded prematurely.
“You will return it!” he shouted from behind the cloud of smoke.
That same golden light suddenly encompassed an area surrounding me, moving along the rooftop—
The wood beneath my feet gave, and I crashed down not just into the second story, but through the floor of that and into the first.
This…was not going to be pretty.
BGM off
The darkness indeed knew.
It had heard Sakura, damned Sakura, call out the name of a magus.
That magus floated amidst the memories of the demon.
The torturer, the killer.
The one that had made them.
It came to mind, amidst the forest near Einzbern, not too far away:
A house full of children, a garden of ivy—
A dark, hollow place of despair and curses.
Home beckoned.
Escaping Fate, Garden of Sins, End
As an orphan in a terrible orphanage, Yumi’s history is somewhat inspired by Miyo Takano from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The very first idea for what snowballed into this story was from an image of Shirou, bow in hand, rescuing children from such a place as depicted in Higurashi Kai. Admittedly, that also sprung up the idea that Yumi would want Shirou to “become a hero” in the same way that Takano wanted to prove Hifumi was correct in his research. Hopefully, I’ve disguised that enough that you didn’t think of it if you’re familiar with the When They Cry verse.
Last edited by Arashi_Leonhart; July 4th, 2012 at 12:01 PM.
Localizationing stuff
Now all I can imagine is Witch of Certainty, Yumi (Emiya?).
Spoiler:
Yeeeeah, well, just don't get stuck on a deserted island or a remote Japanese town with her, I guess.
Localizationing stuff
Heh, so Yumi got her hands on parts of the suit Saber wore in the 4th War?
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