~~~I========>
Hero.
That had been Emiya Shirou's dream for the longest time. To experience the joy of saving someone. To pull others from Hell, the same way he had been.
And when you thought of heroes, you thought of Valkyries.
There were many things that endangered people, but none of them were like the Honkai. The mysterious force that rose up again and again to kill humanity, corrupting people with its energy and manifesting monsters to destroy every human and all of their works. Apocalyptic outbreaks like the Second Eruption that had shattered Russia as a country thirteen years ago were thankfully rare, there had been no Third Eruption. But smaller outbreaks would occassionally appear to ravage a city, and honkai condensation would frequently produce lone killers out in the countryside.
Schicksal was humanity's protector, an organization that stood up against the Honkai, and Valkyries were their soldiers - the people good enough to be worth enhancing through honkai energy so that they could fight against its monsters, win, and save the day for whoever was caught up in that horror. They sacrificed their lives so that others may live happily, stepping onto the battlefield, and merely in volunteering, they had been injected with a poison that would one day kill them as the price for its power.
Shirou's dream had been to join them as far back as he could remember. His father, a former Valkyrie himself, had been against it, and told Shirou in no uncertain terms how crippled he was in what was necessary for Valkyries.
The human body's ability to adapt to the honkai varied. A Valkyrie candidate needed a fairly high tolerance to it, so that they could withstand the poisonous power they were injected with. Shirou had eventually badgered the old man into having him tested, but the results hadn't been promising - Shirou's honkai tolerance was lower than the general population average, let alone Valkyrie standards. His potential career would be very short, and outside a crisis Schicksal wouldn't even let someone with his low tolerance enlist.
But Shirou must become a hero. It was necessary that he achieve it.
And it wasn't impossible. The legendary Murata Himeko, ace of Schicksal's Far East Branch, had tolerance below Schicksal's standards, and she'd got in and become one of their best. There were other skills involved in being a Valkyrie. Honkai tolerance was how power was implanted into the body, but if you were smart enough and tough enough, you could make up for having less raw power.
It was possible. He just had to work a lot harder to make the cut. And that was one of his strengths. He could train his body, train his mind, and learn martial arts and academics in between the part-time jobs he used to fund his life. He had applied to St Freya, the academy Schicksal's Far East Branch used to train Valkyries and people of similar gifts, every single year.
And of course, every year he had recieved a letter politely rejecting his application. That was okay. He knew he hadn't even reached the starting line yet. But he got closer every time, and for him, that was enough.
~~~I========>
St Freya was unique in the world. The one and only civilianized Valkyrie Academy on the face of the Earth. Valkyries were soldiers, and when they signed up, war became their lives. They learned how to fight, and how to survive, at dedicated military academies.
But wasn't that kind of tragic? Valkyries started pretty young, at the peak of their honkai tolerance, and few lived past fourty, between the stress of war against monsters and the corruption of their own power source. They gave up all possibility of a life to create a peaceful world that they had no real place in.
That was why St Freya had been founded. It was a military academy, it deployed its students as soldiers, and taught them how to fight. But in between that, it gave them a reason to. The chance to live and enjoy the peace they were creating.
Its principal, and the director of the Far East Branch, was a woman in her early thirties with the somewhat unfortunate name 'Theresa Apocalypse'. At least, in her own mind, though to the eye she wouldn't ever look like more than a tiny twelve-year-old girl with white hair and a nun's habit scaled to her miniscule height. Probably for the best. She wanted height. Height! And other things. But those came with hormonal surges, doing really dumb things to impress a cute boy/girl, and moping into a bottle of booze after numerous failed dates.
Theresa hummed a little ditty to herself as she pushed this year's Emiya application across her desk, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she pondered. His wish was serious, she could tell that much. He'd sent the application in for seven years straight, and been rejected for six. St Freya had only existed for four of those years, he'd been applying to Schicksal Far East before that, since before Theresa had taken over out here. She stretched her arms out, sighing. "Man, what a shame."
He had the wish to do it, and that was irreplaceable, but he just didn't have the ability. It was possible to get by, and even do pretty well with low honkai tolerance, but not this low. It legitimately wasn't possible for him to make the passing grade, even if he scored every mark on every single other test.
Theresa honestly did want the kid. His adoptive father had been a top-class Valkyrie and, even better, had pissed off her grandfather something fierce when he'd 'resigned'. And this kind of consistent excitement about the job was precious - the kid had already taken full marks in physical conditioning and marksmanship, and his martial arts and academics were well above the normal cutoff and getting closer and closer to a perfect score. But even if he got there, he wouldn't pass through admissions. His honkai tolerance dragged him too far down, his aggregate score mathematically could not make it.
Theresa could waive the admission process, of course. She could get him in class any time she wanted. But ethically, that was another thing. An implanted stigmata would rot his body away. With his tolerance, he'd probably make it five years, and he might not make it to graduation. He could live a happy, productive life as a normal person, and letting him in would steal that from him for nothing.
Letting him keep sending these in was almost as bad. He would never live the life that was possible for him if he kept working towards the impossible. Theresa really should arrange a meeting with the kid and explain the math to him this year, it was legitimately depressing watching these applications come in every year, clawing their way up the scoreboard so ferociously towards a goal they could never reach.
But she didn't want to do that, either. Taking away a kid's dreams... "Muuuuuuuu," Theresa grumbled, spinning her chair around.
"What's wrong, Madame Principal?" a woman's husky voice queried from the doorway.
Theresa yelped in surprise, half-jumping in her seat. She pointed angrily at the voluptuous red-haired woman who'd just peeked in her door. "Knock, Major! Knock! Kay Enn O See Kay!"
"I did," Major Murata Himeko pointed out, entirely unreasonably, shutting the door behind her. "Maybe you didn't hear?"
"Knocking means waiting for a response, Major," Theresa grumbled, rolling her chair closer to her desk. It was a specially made booster seat office chair, an absolute necessity for a twelve-year-old body living in a world of desks made for adults. She loved her chair.
"Ah, I'll have to take that into account next time," Himeko half-apologized, moving up to take one of the seats in the office. "Anything good or especially bad in this year's summer applications, or were you looking at another report?"
"Repeat customer," Theresa sighed, sliding over Emiya's file. "He applied at the start of the year, actually, but I was taking a look again. Seventh year running, it's like looking at a you that'll never actually make it."
Himeko hummed to herself, paging through the folder. "In the kid's defence, I wasn't qualified either when you let me in. His aggregate scores are actually higher than mine were at that age." Oh right, hadn't Himeko been around that age when she'd joined up? That had been a special case, though.
"Not the same," Theresa waved a hand. "I let you in because you were already infected. The artificial stigma increased your expected lifespan." She drummed a finger on the desk. "It's different here, y'know? He's got no infection, he's looking at another sixty years of life. The stigma'll cut him down to like a tenth of that."
"You never know, people can surpass predictions. I'm years past my expectation too, after all, but I'm not dying any time soon."
"Your constitution is a mystery of eternity, Major," Theresa deadpanned. "How you're still alive when you never slow down to take care of your health is beyond the reach of science."
"Hahahah," Himeko threw back her head and laughed. Theresa glared at her jiggling melons. How did anyone go through life, let alone battle, with those stupid things? They had to throw off her balance. "I've told you, Principal, I won't die before I'm united with my soulmate."
Your delusions are beyond the reach of science too, Theresa didn't say, but thought very hard. "People can also not even make it to the prediction," she pointed out instead. "I'm not going to make a decision to cut his life decades short based on the hope that he exceeds the prediction."
"Then I'll make a prediction of my own," Himeko declared, slapping the folder against her leg. "Fifteen years. Good service, numerous honours, A-rank." An excellent Valkyrie's career, including the usual lifespan expectation. Low for what St Freya aimed for, but well above Schicksal's normal standards.
Theresa rolled her eyes. "You can't just make numbers up, give me a reason to think your prediction is better than the official metrics." Not that she expected Himeko not to have such a reason, but she wanted to know it before factoring it into anything.
"I'll give you three." Himeko snapped her fingers, pointing the first one at the file in her other hand. "One, full marks doesn't actually mean perfect. The tests have a performance cap, and the human ability range goes a lot higher than that cap. He got full marks in two fields, which means a standardized test is too easy to find his actual level in them. If we tested to find his actual limit and gave him extra credit, the math might change."
"That'd just be a mathematical artifact," Theresa shook her head. "Talent isn't that fungible. A strong area can make up for a weak one, but there's only so weak it can get away with being before it can't be made up. There's a reason we don't offer extra credit on our tests in the first place."
"Of course. But for my second reason? This isn't actually his potential. I can guarantee you once he's on our coursework, he'll improve rapidly."
"Hah? Have you met the kid? Where's this confidence coming from?"
Himeko smirked, handing the folder back to Theresa. "Look closer at his bio. In particular, his employment history."
Theresa raised an eyebrow, paging through the file. It didn't take long to see what Himeko had. "That is a lot of part-time jobs..."
"Isn't it? There's not enough information to suss out his actual schedule, but with that many part-time jobs, it's hard to imagine when he'd find time to study or sleep."
Theresa whistled.
"Exactly," Himeko nodded. "I'd bet he's working twenty hours a week, minimum. Which means his martial, marksmanship, and academic scores are purely from attending class and whatever study and instruction he manages to squeeze in between all that. If he starts attending, those are all going to shoot up fast once he invests the proper amount of time in them."
Theresa sighed heavily. "Man, why'd you have to point that out, Himeko? Now I'm even more depressed he won't make the cut." She shook her head. "Like we just discussed, we don't offer extra credit. The best he can get is full marks, and if you're right, sure, he can do that. But his tolerance is still too low. Full marks in every other field won't get his aggregate score up to the minimum. He still can't make it, it's just depressingly closer."
"Oh, wait 'till you hear reason number three." Himeko leaned forward. "Remember what you said? It's like looking at me?" She grinned, an expression that always looked savage on her face. "It is. And there are things I had that carried me on. Things that didn't show up in entrance exams. Determination. Cunning. Courage. The ability to put it all together. All the things that distinguish a Valkyrie from a student."
"Mm? So what makes you think they're present? They don't show up on the exams, remember?"
"Honestly, nothing," Himeko admitted, settling back into her seat. "They aren't the sort of things that can be seen through paper. I can see hints on the determination front - if you don't have a little bit going on there, you're not going to apply year after year for what, seven straight? And I have no idea how much actual personal time he manages to fit into his schedule in between school, work, and whatever training he gets in, so there's another mark on dedication. But I can tell you the others might be there. You don't think it's worth a look? We have a practical on entrance, if you really are so sad about constantly rejecting him, we can run him through the practical with everyone else. If he pulls it together, we've got ourselves a Valkyrie, if not, seal his stigmata and send him home, overstrain in the exam won't push him past losing a couple months on the tail end of his life." She shrugged. "And if he at least gets the chance to wash out, he might move on, too."
Honestly, if she didn't think he'd make it through the practical, Theresa would never have signed off on it. Even 'just' a couple months off his life was a big price to claim for a gamble she didn't even think would pay off. But Theresa was an elite. She had been from birth (decanting?). She'd never performed poorly on any of the standard metrics - and they were the standard for a reason, they were usually right. She didn't know the pain of the ungifted, or those who had the ineffable 'something' that pulled their substandard stats into something that worked anyway.
Himeko, however, was the opposite. And teaching and commanding Himeko had taught Theresa that that 'something' was real, that the tests didn't tell the whole story. And if Himeko thought it might be there...
"... Worth the test." Theresa chuckled. There'd have to be some measures to keep the kid alive, the output of an artificial stigmata was far too high for his tolerance, they'd need to force him to keep it to minimum output or he'd corrode before he even graduated. But that wouldn't be too hard. She could sign off on this.
~~~I========>
Frankly, Emiya Shirou hadn't expected to get in this year, either. He'd sent the application more to show his progress than anything else - St Freya's scoring wasn't a mystery, and he was more than capable of looking at his marks and calculating whether he'd crossed the bar or not. He knew he'd still been well short. So he hadn't put his life on hold waiting for St Freya's reply. It was between school years, so he was on break, and expecting his second year at Homurahara. He'd expected it to be another rejection letter, and made no special ceremony about opening it. Where was he at the time?
[ ] Hanging out with his friends. Shirou was a workaholic by nature, but he did have friends, and on occassion could be forced to have a life.
[X] In a dojo in the eastern part of town. When there was no school, he had a whole lot more time in his day, and he could really buckle down and train. For some reason a local priest taught kung fu there on occassion, and he was alarmingly good to learn from. Thoroughly unpleasant to deal with, but the path of a Valkyrie is fraught with peril or something. One of these days he wouldn't be used as a floor mop by that new kouhai of his...
[ ] At a cram school. His training also included the academic, it wasn't his strongest suit but he needed the best scores humanly possible to stand any kind of chance on St Freya's entrance exams. Also his crush attended the cram school, not that she ever looked in his direction.
[ ] At home, where one normally opens letters. Not alone at home, he has some kind of weird dysfunctional freeloading family (plus a useful person), but at home.
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