James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
The only real difference between timelines in FSN is which girl Shirou wants to bang most. Literally everything else in each route is a result of that choice early into the route.
Fate/Recursive Wisdom (Fate/Stay Night)
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Not if you count ALL the timelines.
There's no reason to assume he wasn't put into Mind of Steel, or even one of the random bad ends. Statistically, there are more of them than Good/True ends, so if he didn't wind up in a bad end route, that's more evidence that the timeline he was put in was very specifically chosen.
Eh, I know the butterfly effect would throw things off, but if it were me, it would bother me that I'd never know.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Like after reading tons of fanfiction from your favorite fandom and being unable to tell what happened in the actual story and what didn't.
Yeah, he's very good at Talk-no-Jutsu.
Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you will succeed in doing it.
You're juts one of the players on the table. But you get to peek behind the DM screen.
Yeah, that would have been sad.
Oh, right, better hide those.
Rin does have a soft spot for hopeless cases.
...I'll get the casket. And the drinks.
Don't worry, you only die if you're killed. So don't get killed.
Yukio: "Would you believe me if I said it was two ladies?"
Well I respectfully disagree, Rin. It was funny then and it is funny now.
Smol but fierce.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
That movie just keeps giving. It seems like there's a Kronk meme for every occasion.
Would be quite the thing, wouldn't it? Got so far, advanced a huge number of plots, did it all without garnering suspicion...and it's undone because you forget, "Oh yeah, there's these super visible marks on my hand that will let anyone and everyone know I'm part of this death game."
There's a difference between dying from something difficult and being put through it but wishing you were dead by the end of it.
Pretty average, really. Yukio is just something of a freak by Japanese standards, since he's just shy of 6 feet tall (181cm). It still puts him almost seven inches over her (165cm), so while it's not quite as ridiculous looking as Goku leaning over Frieza and glaring down, she's still about a head shorter than him.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
It is a great movie with strong meme energy.
Huh, he's just as tall as me.
AionVal
(Verified Figment)
- Location
- Beyond The Veil
To be fair, with the level of Pimp energy that the average magus puts out, a little thing like a hand tatoo isn't the first thing you'll notice.
Like, I know this doesn't apply to the cast of FSN or Yukio, but I want you to imagine a "proper Grail War" between magi only. Like the 3rd War or Apocrypha.
Chances are you can point out the Master out of a crowd 9 out of 10 times without having to resort to magic sensing or looking for Command Spells.
It's basically the same as spotting a Stand user from a crowd. Most magi have sticks so far up their asses it functionally acts as a secondary spine.
Chapter 12: Prognosis II
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter 12: Prognosis II
We did not, of course, immediately begin sparring right there in the middle of the house. Even if that had been her intention, I would have naturally refused, because even if Medea could put everything back the way it was, it was a waste of time and energy and I much preferred if we didn't break anything breakable in the first place, thank you very much.
No. I went back to my room and got changed into something more appropriate as workout gear: a t-shirt that I wasn't particularly upset about losing, a relatively light polyester jacket, and a pair of pants made of similar material. We couldn't all be Bazett Fraga McRemitz, after all, and rock a pantsuit that was sturdy enough to double as armor. Made of tungsten carbide.
Magic was complete bullshit. News at eleven.
Speaking of the woman in question, I took a moment to check up on her and make sure nothing had changed from the night before, but she was still on the mend, so there was nothing else for me to do for her just then, and I left her be.
Medea was nowhere to be found. She was, however, still steadily drawing on my reserves, so as long as that was true, I was willing to trust that she hadn't run off to the Ryûdô Temple while my metaphorical back was turned. Plus, well, Reikan hadn't called to tell me she'd arrived, and since I'd neglected to mention that little tidbit, she'd have no reason at all to try and bewitch him against it.
That…was actually a total accident. A convenient outcome, but I hadn't actually meant to keep that from her. It had simply never come up amid the myriad other things that it felt like we had spent days discussing last night. The Grail War itself had simply dominated too much of it.
I made my way down the stairs and out the back door towards the backyard, where Aífe was already waiting for me. Her ominous red spear was nowhere in sight, which I took to mean we were going to be doing this entirely with our fists, so I set the shinai I'd brought down against the side of the house as I stepped out.
It occurred to me then that a Servant and a Reinforced human trading blows might garner lots of unwanted attention, but fortunately, the way the bounded field on this house was set up convinced the people outside that nothing strange or unusual was going on inside it. As long as the bounded field was up and the front gate was closed, the house itself could be in literal ruins and no one would notice anything untoward.
Magecraft really was convenient sometimes, the inherited part of me couldn't help marveling.
"Alright," I said as I pulled on a pair of workout gloves. These ones were specifically enchanted to protect my hands, for all that they looked completely normal. "So how are we doing this?"
"Like I said," she replied. "I need to gauge where you are before I can determine how to go forward, so you're going to attack me with everything you have and I won't do anything except defend."
A part of me wanted to be offended, but she was much stronger than she looked and a legendary hero to boot. Expecting that I could force her to fight back with my own effort was naive. The best I could hope for was to impress her.
This was going to suck, wasn't it?
"Okay."
I took a deep breath, in through my nostrils, out through my mouth. In my head, the image of a mirror cracked and shattered, and heat raced along my cool limbs as my magic circuits turned on and energy surged through them.
"Tosaigid ," I began, starting with my activation phrase. " Cach bunfedhmanna athglanaid ."
Fire poured through my body as my muscles, bones, ligaments — every single one of them was pushed to the limits of an Olympic athlete, and then pushed further as I used my knowledge of medicinal magecraft to surpass even my sister's Reinforcement limits. A breath left my burning lungs and puffed through the cold, January air as steam.
The ground pushed me forward as I kicked off of it like a sprinter from the starting line. Aífe watched me approach, frowning, although whether that had anything to do with my own performance or the butchered Old Irish that I had used as an incantation, I didn't know or really care.
"Ha!"
I led with a textbook punch, aimed at her face, and she shifted slightly to one side as she used her forearm to push my fist out of the way. Undeterred, my other fist shot for her face, my torso twisting to add power and speed to the blow. This one, she deflected with equal ease. Effortless was a good word. She was expending almost no energy to avoid attacks that would have blindsided even a professional boxer.
That wasn't unexpected. Her Agility was easily her highest stat, but it wasn't the only one that was above average for her class, and even Medea could have seen me coming as long as I didn't catch her by surprise.
In the first place, the idea wasn't to match a Servant, especially not one as focused on direct combat as Aífe. No, I just needed to be good enough that I could match fists with one of the greatest masters of Bajiquan of the current era and come out on top.
I pulled back, retracting my arm, then led with a pair of short, swift jabs that she dodged by tilting out of the way and followed up with a heavy haymaker that she actually blocked, this time. The smack of my arm hitting hers was practically thunderous.
Of course, she still didn't look bothered, although her frown was becoming steadily deeper and closer to a scowl with every move.
Was I truly that disappointing? What was she really expecting of me, even? This, all of this, was my own slapdash invention based upon the diminished sports that had sprung up from the very martial arts I wanted her to teach me. It was only natural that I wouldn't measure up to the sorts of men she'd trained during her life.
My gut burned with indignation, and I redoubled my efforts, attacking her faster with harder blows.
But no matter what I tried, I never landed anything solid. The wind whipped about my body from the speed at which I was moving, my lungs ached from the effort of keeping up with the amount of energy I was expending, and sweat broke out across my body as I pushed myself harder than I ever had before. I got as close to her as I dared, I tried to sweep her leg, I tried to grapple her, but she avoided all of it, blocked what she didn't care to dodge, and I might as well have been chasing the sun for all the progress I seemed to make.
And then, without warning, she moved.
There was no way to really, truly encapsulate what that meant. Even comparing it to a car lurching from zero to sixty in less than a second couldn't have possibly captured the sheer abruptness of her leaping into action or the relentless pace that accompanied it. The rain of fists that came for me redefined what I knew of speed and power.
It was like facing down a hurricane.
She was faster than me, by a large margin, and she struck with precise, measured blows that I only barely managed to blunt or dodge around. Every motion was fluid and calculated, every punch perfection, every kick sublime, and her footwork was so incredible that I could have written a book about it.
Her fist came for my face, as though revenge for my own earlier attempts. The skin of my cheek burned as her knuckles grazed it. Her other fist came around. I had to squint against the wind that passed in its wake as I stumbled to the side in a clumsy dodge.
She attacked, and I defended. She struck, and I blocked. My arms and legs throbbed from every hit — and she didn't miss — and my muscles burned from the effort to stay just far enough ahead of her to keep her from landing a blow to my head or chest.
She was toying with me. It was obvious. No, of course, if she wanted to overwhelm me, I wouldn't even be able to see her fists, let alone be fast enough to block them. She was a Servant, and I was just a Reinforced human. She could have ended this at any moment.
Her fist came, faster than before. My eyes went wide, because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop it, and I didn't even have time to squeeze them shut in preparation for my nose being shattered like cheap plywood.
It never landed.
A rush of air blew my hair back, and I panted, heart racing, as I looked past the clenched fist bare centimeters from my face into Aífe's scowl and narrowed, amethyst eyes.
"That's all?" she asked quietly.
I couldn't find the breath in my lungs to answer.
"A storied, mythical style of martial arts," she went on, voice dripping with scorn, "practiced by so many celebrated warriors, capable of slaying even the gods themselves…and two-thousand years later, this is all that remains?"
Was I supposed to apologize? It wasn't like I had personally had any hand in the degradation of the techniques she had presumably dedicated her life to mastering. I was still technically too young to drink alcohol.
"Again," she ordered sternly. She jerked her head back towards the house. "This time, bring that training sword of yours. I want to see what I have to work with there."
I regarded her for a moment, still catching my breath, but, well… This was kind of what I asked for, wasn't it? I hadn't known it was going to be quite so rough going into it, but I'd already figured it wouldn't be something I could half-ass. It wasn't even an hour ago when she was telling me she expected me to put in my full effort. I wasn't going to give up before I'd even made it past the starting line, was I?
No. This was one thing I couldn't afford to quit on. Too much depended on it.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I went back to fetch my shinai, and after I'd picked it up, I turned back around in enough time to watch her slice a branch off one of the trees that sat at the back of the property. Like it weighed nothing, she tossed the limb one-handed up into the air, and then the red spear that I knew just had to be Gáe Bolg flashed as she jabbed and spun and swung with such lightning speed that I couldn't even see a vague red blur.
By the time the branch had gone up and come back down, it had been transformed into a crude but workable wooden sword. It wasn't as polished and smooth as the one I had, bought from a store as it was, but the form was unmistakable and the shape was perfectly serviceable for its intended purpose.
Her spear disappeared and Aífe caught it near one end as it came down to about shoulder-level. She gave it a few test swings and nodded to herself, apparently satisfied.
It took me a couple of seconds to realize I was staring.
I gave myself a mental shake to accompany the physical shaking of my head. Right. Yet another reminder that Servants were very much superhuman and I should expect them to do the craziest, most impossible things I could imagine, as well as several things I couldn't. My definition of "possible" was going to be stretched far beyond its breaking point in the next two weeks alone; forget about the Grail War itself.
Damn it, freezing up if and when I saw Gilgamesh open his Gate of Bullshit would just get me killed. I definitely had to get used to it sooner rather than later.
"This will do," Aífe said as I approached, rolling her wrist as she got used to the feel of her new practice sword. "Now. Show me this…stickfighting you've been teaching yourself."
Strictly speaking, Irish Bataireacht is its own thing, and I've just cobbled something together based upon it. But I didn't say that out loud, because it wasn't really the point. I wasn't going to be holding my own in any Highland Games without cheating, but it should be perfectly workable as it was.
Of course, perfectly workable was probably going to look like uncoordinated flailing to her, but I could at least comfort myself in the knowledge that Shirou was even worse. If she saw him, she'd probably pluck the sword from his hands "before he could hurt himself."
Okay. Yeah. That mental image made me feel a whole lot better about the asskicking I was about to receive.
A breath hissed out of my mouth and I settled into my customized ready stance, ignoring the way she started frowning before I even actually did anything, and then I kicked off the ground again, racing towards her at speed. Surpass the speed of sound — ha. Who had I thought I was fooling back then?
The wind whistled as my shinai cut through it, but predictably, Aífe brought up her own sword and blocked my sweeping swing with a loud CRACK. The vibration of the collision wiggled its way up my arm, and still, her frown only got deeper.
Yes, yes, I knew it was a bastardization, I knew it wasn't something incredible, and I knew it wouldn't impress her. Moving on.
I drew back, and my arm flowed into an overhand chop, but of course, she blocked this one just as easily as the first. The frown on her face was becoming more and more pronounced as her brow knitted together. I didn't know what exactly was going on in her head, but I didn't need to in order to feel the disappointment that was percolating there.
There was no helping it. I was a modern human without anything to go on but a handful of sports. If she was expecting me to be some kind of savant who had miraculously discovered the secrets of her long lost martial arts… Well, I'd already proven that I wasn't, hadn't I? None of this should have been a surprise to her.
I drew back again, then flew into a flurry of blows, putting my best foot forward. No longer sticking to single, powerful blows, I chained together as many combos as I could, swinging at her with all my speed and sliding from one attack to the next as smoothly as I was physically able.
Still, none of it impressed her. She was like a wall, and her expression became stonier and stonier with each passing second.
My own frustration mounted, and I redoubled my efforts, putting on a spurt of speed and strength I hadn't known I had before. The crack of my shinai smashing into her crudely, roughly hewn practice sword became as thunder, echoing throughout the yard so loudly that I was almost afraid it would be too much for the bounded field to actually hide.
And still, she was unmoved, both figuratively and literally. She hadn't taken more than a single step back since the beginning.
It was starting to become a matter of pride. Yes, I knew none of what I could do would seem at all remarkable to someone who had practiced and perfected the original, but if I could do at least one thing, at least one technique that would make her raise her eyebrows, even if it was only the tiniest bit, then that would be validation, wouldn't it? It would mean I hadn't pushed myself to invent this bastardized mess for no reason.
It would mean I hadn't wasted the last ten years.
One last time, I drew back, and I took in a swift breath as magical energy flowed down my arm and into the sword in my hand. Something like this, I'd never really pulled it off successfully before, but the idea had stuck with me. The feats of the ancient Celtic martial arts — if I could perform just one of them, that would just have to be enough.
And so I threw myself forward one last time, and this time, I swung deliberately for her practice sword instead of her body. I put everything I had into the blow, and at that moment, I didn't care if my own shinai shattered, because it was just a hunk of wood and it could be replaced.
"Claideam-brisidaire —"
CRACK.
Except it stopped, useless.
My sword-breaker, the same technique this same woman had once used to break Cúchulainn's own sword until it was no longer than his fist, stopped dead on her own makeshift sword. It had accomplished nothing, let alone the feat it was supposed to.
"Sword-breaker?" Aífe murmured. "I see. As always, Master, your use of my tongue is overly literal, and just like this sword style of yours, it's cobbled together from pieces that are technically correct. At the end of the day, however, it's nothing more than a pale imitation, and even there, it fails."
Effortlessly, she pushed me back, and I stumbled as I lost my balance and had to scramble to stay upright. She lifted her wooden sword above her head, staring at me with cold eyes that made me feel — once again — like she towered over me. I didn't need to be a genius to read her intent.
Shit!
I brought my shinai up to block —
"Bruud gine ."
CRACK.
I shut my eyes and turned my face away as my shinai shattered in my hand, sending splinters of wood flying. My glove protected my sword hand and my clothes were apparently sturdy enough to protect my body, but something whizzed past my head and a line of white heat drew itself across my nose.
My eyes were open again as soon as it was safe, and I wasn't surprised to find that there was little left of my shinai except for the cracked hilt and a sharp shard that jutted up from it, barely long enough to be called a dagger. Just as the name implied, she had broken my sword the same way she had broken Cúchulainn's.
She had also broken hers. It, too, had cracked and shattered under the power behind that blow, because evidently, an ordinary piece of wood couldn't stand up to the kind of power required to pull off a move like that.
Aífe clicked her tongue in disgust and discarded the broken remnants of her makeshift weapon.
"You truly must not have had much to work with," she commented. "Trying to trace back the modern sports to the ancient martial arts they were based upon, didn't you say? I suppose I should be impressed that you even made it as far as you did, when you likely had little to guide how other than the old myths and legends of my heyday."
I didn't reply, trying to bid my thundering heart to calm.
"One last thing I want to see," she said. "Have you studied much in the way of rune magic?"
"Very little," I admitted breathlessly.
The utility of runes was plain to anyone who viewed magecraft as a tool rather than an art or a mystery to be studied. But I had focused almost exclusively on medicinal magecraft, because as useful as runes were, the most important thing to me was making sure my sisters got out of this thing alive, and being able to keep them alive was the thing I felt I needed to know best.
Plus, you know, if I was using my own magecraft against my enemies in the Grail War, then something was very, very wrong.
"Show me," she commanded.
So, after I had managed to catch my breath and cooled down a little, I did.
Needless to say, she wasn't impressed by my rune magic, either.
"There are worse foundations," she said when I was done. "In some ways, starting over from scratch would be an even greater challenge."
But then I wouldn't have to unlearn some bad habits, would I? I didn't voice that. Even if it was almost certainly true, my ego had been bruised enough, so I was going to let myself pretend that she was actually complimenting me.
"Two weeks, you said?" she asked.
"Closer to a week and a half," I answered. "Saber will be summoned next Saturday. Things will still take a few more days to really pick up, but Saber is officially the last Servant to be summoned."
She clicked her tongue again. "The timeframe is tight, but if it's what we have to work with, then we'll work with it."
She nodded towards the direction of the house. "Take a half-hour break," she ordered. "We'll officially begin your instruction in the martial arts after that, and from here on, you'll be learning that in the mornings and rune magic in the afternoons. I'm going to take you as far as I can in what little time we have."
Suddenly, she grinned.
"Heh," she chuckled lowly. "A month to turn a modern human into a warrior who can outshine the Hound… Sister, are you watching from that wretched hellscape? I'm going to surpass you in every way that matters."
She turned away and vanished from sight.
I took a deep breath and gathered the shattered remnants of my pride, then turned around myself and headed back to the house for my half an hour's worth of respite. After a few steps, I realized I was still holding onto the broken handle of my shinai, and with a disgusted scoff, I tossed it away.
On the bright side, Emiya will never get to see that experience for himself, I thought with a sort of gallows humor.
The zipper on my jacket came down and gave my sweating body a little air to cool off as my circuits slowly did the same. A hand run through my soaked hair proved that I was going to need another shower before I climbed into bed tonight, but if this was a preview of how sore I was going to be by the end of the day, making that a bath with some Epsom salts to ease my aching muscles was probably a better idea.
I stepped through the backdoor and turned immediately towards the kitchen. I had already had breakfast, but a glass of water to hydrate and a protein bar or something to keep my energy up was going to be essential if I was going to be pushing myself this hard. I was going to need the extra calories and nutrients to build myself up.
It turned out, however, that there was already someone there.
"Medea," I blurted out before I could think better of it. "You're here."
She scowled. "Were you expecting me to have left?"
"Well, no, but…" I hadn't discounted the possibility earlier, no, but I definitely couldn't admit that to her. "I thought you might be busy or something."
She sniffed. "Making your trinkets, you mean?" she asked sardonically.
Don't rise to that, I told myself, almost literally biting my tongue. Don't rise to the bait. Whatever you do, don't rise to it.
My eyes cast about for something, anything, to change the conversation to safer territory, but there wasn't much in a kitchen except for food.
What the hell, I thought. Half the way to Saber's heart had been through her stomach, hadn't it?
"Would you like some breakfast?" I asked her before I could second guess myself.
Her eyebrows rose. "Servants don't need to eat," she told me slowly, like she thought I was stupid.
"I'm aware," I retorted a little more sharply than I'd intended. "But even if you don't need it, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it."
Her brow furrowed and she regarded me with suspicion, like she was trying to find my angle. That was going to be the hardest part of getting through to her, because I very much did have one, it was just the same one all men had when they were offering to do things for a woman they liked: I wanted her to like me back.
Well, okay, so there were some ulterior motives even behind that, but nothing said I couldn't have multiple reasons for wanting her to like me, right?
"What did you have in mind?" she asked cautiously.
"I don't have time for anything incredibly extravagant," I admitted, "and breakfast isn't really where you go all out anyway. I am known by at least one person for making some pretty good scrambled eggs, though."
I just didn't bother very often because Rin had this ridiculous thing about not eating too much at breakfast.
Medea quirked one eyebrow, and before she could even try to hide it, a small, amused smile curled at the corners of her mouth. "And who is this one person?"
"Me, of course," I replied.
She rolled her eyes.
"Of course."
I moved to the fridge and pulled out the carton of eggs I'd bought a few days back and pursed my lips down at it as I plucked two out. Scrambled eggs was a fairly simple meal and it was easy to make, so I wound up eating it whenever I was too tired to be more ambitious, and that meant I didn't have that many left.
Gonna have to do some shopping, I noted mentally.
In England, I'd sometimes had bacon to go along with the eggs, but here, toast was going to have to suffice, so I grabbed a pair of slices and some jam — raspberry, of course — then went about preparing the rest after I dropped them into the toaster.
I wasn't a huge fan of cooking, if I was honest. It kept my hands busy, but my mind tended to wander because I didn't find cooking all that engaging mentally. Now, however, I focused the entirety of my attention on the task in front of me, because I needed this to wow her. I wanted her to be completely blown away by what someone who knew what they were doing could do with something this simple.
So a few spices went into the mashed and blended eggs as the toaster ticked down. Normally, I just added a little bit of salt, but I used several others to enhance things even more, and I had to remind myself not to overdo it.
Medea watched me work silently and without commenting. Come to think of it, wasn't there something about how she wanted to learn how to cook herself, but wasn't very good at it? I wasn't sure that was actually something about her that I remembered or if it was just a quirk I had imagined up somewhere, though.
Either way, it only took a few minutes to put everything together and a few more to cook it. Eggs were quick like that. And like I'd purposefully timed it to work out that way, the toast popped up, crisp and brown, just as the eggs finished.
Once it was all piled onto a plate — with the jam spread over the toast in a thin layer — I took it over to her at the little table sitting in the corner and set it down with silverware. She hesitated only for a moment, and then took her fork and knife and tentatively started in.
While she did that, I grabbed myself a glass and some water, then unwrapped a protein bar and leaned back against the countertop, eyes fixed on her.
And the judges are conferring on the score now, I thought as I watched her eat, approximating my best "Iron Chef announcer."
Slowly, her face changed, and she went from cautious to pleasantly surprised. Her pace picked up, and the hesitation disappeared. She wasn't shoveling, but she was definitely eating faster than what I thought of as normal speed.
Something in my stomach fluttered, anxious, so I distracted myself some more.
I don't know, Jim, I imagined another commentator saying. The performance was simple, but definitely top notch. I can't imagine the score being any lower than a seven, but it would be a complete travesty if they didn't at least award an eight.
After the eggs, she went to the toast, and a pleased little hum actually escaped her when she tasted the tart sweetness of the raspberry jam. She ate the second piece with something approaching relish, and she even closed her eyes to savor the last bite.
And it looks like the panel is about to come to a decision…
"So?" I asked when she was done.
Small spots of red bloomed across her cheeks, like she'd forgotten I was even there, and she coughed awkwardly into her fist. I could practically see the thought in her head, how she wished she had her cowl up so she could hide her face. "It was adequate."
I smothered a smile.
Full tens across the board, Jim.
"I'll make sure to make enough food to bring some back for you at dinner, then."
The last of my protein bar was shoved into my mouth and summarily eaten, and then I drained the last of my water. My glass went into the sink, where I could wash it later.
I would have to deprive myself of some leftovers, but if trying my best with some scrambled eggs got that kind of reception? I'd be an idiot not to get her three full meals every day.
"That's not necessary," she began, trying to sound firm and stern, but she'd let enough of her walls slip, if only for that moment, that I could see right through it. "Really, it isn't."
"No," I agreed, "but I want to do it anyway."
I left before she could muster a response, feeling much lighter than when I had walked in through that backdoor. There we go — my first victory in the war to win Medea over.
We did not, of course, immediately begin sparring right there in the middle of the house. Even if that had been her intention, I would have naturally refused, because even if Medea could put everything back the way it was, it was a waste of time and energy and I much preferred if we didn't break anything breakable in the first place, thank you very much.
No. I went back to my room and got changed into something more appropriate as workout gear: a t-shirt that I wasn't particularly upset about losing, a relatively light polyester jacket, and a pair of pants made of similar material. We couldn't all be Bazett Fraga McRemitz, after all, and rock a pantsuit that was sturdy enough to double as armor. Made of tungsten carbide.
Magic was complete bullshit. News at eleven.
Speaking of the woman in question, I took a moment to check up on her and make sure nothing had changed from the night before, but she was still on the mend, so there was nothing else for me to do for her just then, and I left her be.
Medea was nowhere to be found. She was, however, still steadily drawing on my reserves, so as long as that was true, I was willing to trust that she hadn't run off to the Ryûdô Temple while my metaphorical back was turned. Plus, well, Reikan hadn't called to tell me she'd arrived, and since I'd neglected to mention that little tidbit, she'd have no reason at all to try and bewitch him against it.
That…was actually a total accident. A convenient outcome, but I hadn't actually meant to keep that from her. It had simply never come up amid the myriad other things that it felt like we had spent days discussing last night. The Grail War itself had simply dominated too much of it.
I made my way down the stairs and out the back door towards the backyard, where Aífe was already waiting for me. Her ominous red spear was nowhere in sight, which I took to mean we were going to be doing this entirely with our fists, so I set the shinai I'd brought down against the side of the house as I stepped out.
It occurred to me then that a Servant and a Reinforced human trading blows might garner lots of unwanted attention, but fortunately, the way the bounded field on this house was set up convinced the people outside that nothing strange or unusual was going on inside it. As long as the bounded field was up and the front gate was closed, the house itself could be in literal ruins and no one would notice anything untoward.
Magecraft really was convenient sometimes, the inherited part of me couldn't help marveling.
"Alright," I said as I pulled on a pair of workout gloves. These ones were specifically enchanted to protect my hands, for all that they looked completely normal. "So how are we doing this?"
"Like I said," she replied. "I need to gauge where you are before I can determine how to go forward, so you're going to attack me with everything you have and I won't do anything except defend."
A part of me wanted to be offended, but she was much stronger than she looked and a legendary hero to boot. Expecting that I could force her to fight back with my own effort was naive. The best I could hope for was to impress her.
This was going to suck, wasn't it?
"Okay."
I took a deep breath, in through my nostrils, out through my mouth. In my head, the image of a mirror cracked and shattered, and heat raced along my cool limbs as my magic circuits turned on and energy surged through them.
"
Fire poured through my body as my muscles, bones, ligaments — every single one of them was pushed to the limits of an Olympic athlete, and then pushed further as I used my knowledge of medicinal magecraft to surpass even my sister's Reinforcement limits. A breath left my burning lungs and puffed through the cold, January air as steam.
The ground pushed me forward as I kicked off of it like a sprinter from the starting line. Aífe watched me approach, frowning, although whether that had anything to do with my own performance or the butchered Old Irish that I had used as an incantation, I didn't know or really care.
"Ha!"
I led with a textbook punch, aimed at her face, and she shifted slightly to one side as she used her forearm to push my fist out of the way. Undeterred, my other fist shot for her face, my torso twisting to add power and speed to the blow. This one, she deflected with equal ease. Effortless was a good word. She was expending almost no energy to avoid attacks that would have blindsided even a professional boxer.
That wasn't unexpected. Her Agility was easily her highest stat, but it wasn't the only one that was above average for her class, and even Medea could have seen me coming as long as I didn't catch her by surprise.
In the first place, the idea wasn't to match a Servant, especially not one as focused on direct combat as Aífe. No, I just needed to be good enough that I could match fists with one of the greatest masters of Bajiquan of the current era and come out on top.
I pulled back, retracting my arm, then led with a pair of short, swift jabs that she dodged by tilting out of the way and followed up with a heavy haymaker that she actually blocked, this time. The smack of my arm hitting hers was practically thunderous.
Of course, she still didn't look bothered, although her frown was becoming steadily deeper and closer to a scowl with every move.
Was I truly that disappointing? What was she really expecting of me, even? This, all of this, was my own slapdash invention based upon the diminished sports that had sprung up from the very martial arts I wanted her to teach me. It was only natural that I wouldn't measure up to the sorts of men she'd trained during her life.
My gut burned with indignation, and I redoubled my efforts, attacking her faster with harder blows.
But no matter what I tried, I never landed anything solid. The wind whipped about my body from the speed at which I was moving, my lungs ached from the effort of keeping up with the amount of energy I was expending, and sweat broke out across my body as I pushed myself harder than I ever had before. I got as close to her as I dared, I tried to sweep her leg, I tried to grapple her, but she avoided all of it, blocked what she didn't care to dodge, and I might as well have been chasing the sun for all the progress I seemed to make.
And then, without warning, she moved.
There was no way to really, truly encapsulate what that meant. Even comparing it to a car lurching from zero to sixty in less than a second couldn't have possibly captured the sheer abruptness of her leaping into action or the relentless pace that accompanied it. The rain of fists that came for me redefined what I knew of speed and power.
It was like facing down a hurricane.
She was faster than me, by a large margin, and she struck with precise, measured blows that I only barely managed to blunt or dodge around. Every motion was fluid and calculated, every punch perfection, every kick sublime, and her footwork was so incredible that I could have written a book about it.
Her fist came for my face, as though revenge for my own earlier attempts. The skin of my cheek burned as her knuckles grazed it. Her other fist came around. I had to squint against the wind that passed in its wake as I stumbled to the side in a clumsy dodge.
She attacked, and I defended. She struck, and I blocked. My arms and legs throbbed from every hit — and she didn't miss — and my muscles burned from the effort to stay just far enough ahead of her to keep her from landing a blow to my head or chest.
She was toying with me. It was obvious. No, of course, if she wanted to overwhelm me, I wouldn't even be able to see her fists, let alone be fast enough to block them. She was a Servant, and I was just a Reinforced human. She could have ended this at any moment.
Her fist came, faster than before. My eyes went wide, because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop it, and I didn't even have time to squeeze them shut in preparation for my nose being shattered like cheap plywood.
It never landed.
A rush of air blew my hair back, and I panted, heart racing, as I looked past the clenched fist bare centimeters from my face into Aífe's scowl and narrowed, amethyst eyes.
"That's all?" she asked quietly.
I couldn't find the breath in my lungs to answer.
"A storied, mythical style of martial arts," she went on, voice dripping with scorn, "practiced by so many celebrated warriors, capable of slaying even the gods themselves…and two-thousand years later, this is all that remains?"
Was I supposed to apologize? It wasn't like I had personally had any hand in the degradation of the techniques she had presumably dedicated her life to mastering. I was still technically too young to drink alcohol.
"Again," she ordered sternly. She jerked her head back towards the house. "This time, bring that training sword of yours. I want to see what I have to work with there."
I regarded her for a moment, still catching my breath, but, well… This was kind of what I asked for, wasn't it? I hadn't known it was going to be quite so rough going into it, but I'd already figured it wouldn't be something I could half-ass. It wasn't even an hour ago when she was telling me she expected me to put in my full effort. I wasn't going to give up before I'd even made it past the starting line, was I?
No. This was one thing I couldn't afford to quit on. Too much depended on it.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I went back to fetch my shinai, and after I'd picked it up, I turned back around in enough time to watch her slice a branch off one of the trees that sat at the back of the property. Like it weighed nothing, she tossed the limb one-handed up into the air, and then the red spear that I knew just had to be Gáe Bolg flashed as she jabbed and spun and swung with such lightning speed that I couldn't even see a vague red blur.
By the time the branch had gone up and come back down, it had been transformed into a crude but workable wooden sword. It wasn't as polished and smooth as the one I had, bought from a store as it was, but the form was unmistakable and the shape was perfectly serviceable for its intended purpose.
Her spear disappeared and Aífe caught it near one end as it came down to about shoulder-level. She gave it a few test swings and nodded to herself, apparently satisfied.
It took me a couple of seconds to realize I was staring.
I gave myself a mental shake to accompany the physical shaking of my head. Right. Yet another reminder that Servants were very much superhuman and I should expect them to do the craziest, most impossible things I could imagine, as well as several things I couldn't. My definition of "possible" was going to be stretched far beyond its breaking point in the next two weeks alone; forget about the Grail War itself.
Damn it, freezing up if and when I saw Gilgamesh open his Gate of Bullshit would just get me killed. I definitely had to get used to it sooner rather than later.
"This will do," Aífe said as I approached, rolling her wrist as she got used to the feel of her new practice sword. "Now. Show me this…stickfighting you've been teaching yourself."
Strictly speaking, Irish Bataireacht is its own thing, and I've just cobbled something together based upon it. But I didn't say that out loud, because it wasn't really the point. I wasn't going to be holding my own in any Highland Games without cheating, but it should be perfectly workable as it was.
Of course, perfectly workable was probably going to look like uncoordinated flailing to her, but I could at least comfort myself in the knowledge that Shirou was even worse. If she saw him, she'd probably pluck the sword from his hands "before he could hurt himself."
Okay. Yeah. That mental image made me feel a whole lot better about the asskicking I was about to receive.
A breath hissed out of my mouth and I settled into my customized ready stance, ignoring the way she started frowning before I even actually did anything, and then I kicked off the ground again, racing towards her at speed. Surpass the speed of sound — ha. Who had I thought I was fooling back then?
The wind whistled as my shinai cut through it, but predictably, Aífe brought up her own sword and blocked my sweeping swing with a loud CRACK. The vibration of the collision wiggled its way up my arm, and still, her frown only got deeper.
Yes, yes, I knew it was a bastardization, I knew it wasn't something incredible, and I knew it wouldn't impress her. Moving on.
I drew back, and my arm flowed into an overhand chop, but of course, she blocked this one just as easily as the first. The frown on her face was becoming more and more pronounced as her brow knitted together. I didn't know what exactly was going on in her head, but I didn't need to in order to feel the disappointment that was percolating there.
There was no helping it. I was a modern human without anything to go on but a handful of sports. If she was expecting me to be some kind of savant who had miraculously discovered the secrets of her long lost martial arts… Well, I'd already proven that I wasn't, hadn't I? None of this should have been a surprise to her.
I drew back again, then flew into a flurry of blows, putting my best foot forward. No longer sticking to single, powerful blows, I chained together as many combos as I could, swinging at her with all my speed and sliding from one attack to the next as smoothly as I was physically able.
Still, none of it impressed her. She was like a wall, and her expression became stonier and stonier with each passing second.
My own frustration mounted, and I redoubled my efforts, putting on a spurt of speed and strength I hadn't known I had before. The crack of my shinai smashing into her crudely, roughly hewn practice sword became as thunder, echoing throughout the yard so loudly that I was almost afraid it would be too much for the bounded field to actually hide.
And still, she was unmoved, both figuratively and literally. She hadn't taken more than a single step back since the beginning.
It was starting to become a matter of pride. Yes, I knew none of what I could do would seem at all remarkable to someone who had practiced and perfected the original, but if I could do at least one thing, at least one technique that would make her raise her eyebrows, even if it was only the tiniest bit, then that would be validation, wouldn't it? It would mean I hadn't pushed myself to invent this bastardized mess for no reason.
It would mean I hadn't wasted the last ten years.
One last time, I drew back, and I took in a swift breath as magical energy flowed down my arm and into the sword in my hand. Something like this, I'd never really pulled it off successfully before, but the idea had stuck with me. The feats of the ancient Celtic martial arts — if I could perform just one of them, that would just have to be enough.
And so I threw myself forward one last time, and this time, I swung deliberately for her practice sword instead of her body. I put everything I had into the blow, and at that moment, I didn't care if my own shinai shattered, because it was just a hunk of wood and it could be replaced.
"Claideam-brisidaire —"
CRACK.
Except it stopped, useless.
My sword-breaker, the same technique this same woman had once used to break Cúchulainn's own sword until it was no longer than his fist, stopped dead on her own makeshift sword. It had accomplished nothing, let alone the feat it was supposed to.
"Sword-breaker?" Aífe murmured. "I see. As always, Master, your use of my tongue is overly literal, and just like this sword style of yours, it's cobbled together from pieces that are technically correct. At the end of the day, however, it's nothing more than a pale imitation, and even there, it fails."
Effortlessly, she pushed me back, and I stumbled as I lost my balance and had to scramble to stay upright. She lifted her wooden sword above her head, staring at me with cold eyes that made me feel — once again — like she towered over me. I didn't need to be a genius to read her intent.
Shit!
I brought my shinai up to block —
"
CRACK.
I shut my eyes and turned my face away as my shinai shattered in my hand, sending splinters of wood flying. My glove protected my sword hand and my clothes were apparently sturdy enough to protect my body, but something whizzed past my head and a line of white heat drew itself across my nose.
My eyes were open again as soon as it was safe, and I wasn't surprised to find that there was little left of my shinai except for the cracked hilt and a sharp shard that jutted up from it, barely long enough to be called a dagger. Just as the name implied, she had broken my sword the same way she had broken Cúchulainn's.
She had also broken hers. It, too, had cracked and shattered under the power behind that blow, because evidently, an ordinary piece of wood couldn't stand up to the kind of power required to pull off a move like that.
Aífe clicked her tongue in disgust and discarded the broken remnants of her makeshift weapon.
"You truly must not have had much to work with," she commented. "Trying to trace back the modern sports to the ancient martial arts they were based upon, didn't you say? I suppose I should be impressed that you even made it as far as you did, when you likely had little to guide how other than the old myths and legends of my heyday."
I didn't reply, trying to bid my thundering heart to calm.
"One last thing I want to see," she said. "Have you studied much in the way of rune magic?"
"Very little," I admitted breathlessly.
The utility of runes was plain to anyone who viewed magecraft as a tool rather than an art or a mystery to be studied. But I had focused almost exclusively on medicinal magecraft, because as useful as runes were, the most important thing to me was making sure my sisters got out of this thing alive, and being able to keep them alive was the thing I felt I needed to know best.
Plus, you know, if I was using my own magecraft against my enemies in the Grail War, then something was very, very wrong.
"Show me," she commanded.
So, after I had managed to catch my breath and cooled down a little, I did.
Needless to say, she wasn't impressed by my rune magic, either.
"There are worse foundations," she said when I was done. "In some ways, starting over from scratch would be an even greater challenge."
But then I wouldn't have to unlearn some bad habits, would I? I didn't voice that. Even if it was almost certainly true, my ego had been bruised enough, so I was going to let myself pretend that she was actually complimenting me.
"Two weeks, you said?" she asked.
"Closer to a week and a half," I answered. "Saber will be summoned next Saturday. Things will still take a few more days to really pick up, but Saber is officially the last Servant to be summoned."
She clicked her tongue again. "The timeframe is tight, but if it's what we have to work with, then we'll work with it."
She nodded towards the direction of the house. "Take a half-hour break," she ordered. "We'll officially begin your instruction in the martial arts after that, and from here on, you'll be learning that in the mornings and rune magic in the afternoons. I'm going to take you as far as I can in what little time we have."
Suddenly, she grinned.
"Heh," she chuckled lowly. "A month to turn a modern human into a warrior who can outshine the Hound… Sister, are you watching from that wretched hellscape? I'm going to surpass you in every way that matters."
She turned away and vanished from sight.
I took a deep breath and gathered the shattered remnants of my pride, then turned around myself and headed back to the house for my half an hour's worth of respite. After a few steps, I realized I was still holding onto the broken handle of my shinai, and with a disgusted scoff, I tossed it away.
On the bright side, Emiya will never get to see that experience for himself, I thought with a sort of gallows humor.
The zipper on my jacket came down and gave my sweating body a little air to cool off as my circuits slowly did the same. A hand run through my soaked hair proved that I was going to need another shower before I climbed into bed tonight, but if this was a preview of how sore I was going to be by the end of the day, making that a bath with some Epsom salts to ease my aching muscles was probably a better idea.
I stepped through the backdoor and turned immediately towards the kitchen. I had already had breakfast, but a glass of water to hydrate and a protein bar or something to keep my energy up was going to be essential if I was going to be pushing myself this hard. I was going to need the extra calories and nutrients to build myself up.
It turned out, however, that there was already someone there.
"Medea," I blurted out before I could think better of it. "You're here."
She scowled. "Were you expecting me to have left?"
"Well, no, but…" I hadn't discounted the possibility earlier, no, but I definitely couldn't admit that to her. "I thought you might be busy or something."
She sniffed. "Making your trinkets, you mean?" she asked sardonically.
Don't rise to that, I told myself, almost literally biting my tongue. Don't rise to the bait. Whatever you do, don't rise to it.
My eyes cast about for something, anything, to change the conversation to safer territory, but there wasn't much in a kitchen except for food.
What the hell, I thought. Half the way to Saber's heart had been through her stomach, hadn't it?
"Would you like some breakfast?" I asked her before I could second guess myself.
Her eyebrows rose. "Servants don't need to eat," she told me slowly, like she thought I was stupid.
"I'm aware," I retorted a little more sharply than I'd intended. "But even if you don't need it, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it."
Her brow furrowed and she regarded me with suspicion, like she was trying to find my angle. That was going to be the hardest part of getting through to her, because I very much did have one, it was just the same one all men had when they were offering to do things for a woman they liked: I wanted her to like me back.
Well, okay, so there were some ulterior motives even behind that, but nothing said I couldn't have multiple reasons for wanting her to like me, right?
"What did you have in mind?" she asked cautiously.
"I don't have time for anything incredibly extravagant," I admitted, "and breakfast isn't really where you go all out anyway. I am known by at least one person for making some pretty good scrambled eggs, though."
I just didn't bother very often because Rin had this ridiculous thing about not eating too much at breakfast.
Medea quirked one eyebrow, and before she could even try to hide it, a small, amused smile curled at the corners of her mouth. "And who is this one person?"
"Me, of course," I replied.
She rolled her eyes.
"Of course."
I moved to the fridge and pulled out the carton of eggs I'd bought a few days back and pursed my lips down at it as I plucked two out. Scrambled eggs was a fairly simple meal and it was easy to make, so I wound up eating it whenever I was too tired to be more ambitious, and that meant I didn't have that many left.
Gonna have to do some shopping, I noted mentally.
In England, I'd sometimes had bacon to go along with the eggs, but here, toast was going to have to suffice, so I grabbed a pair of slices and some jam — raspberry, of course — then went about preparing the rest after I dropped them into the toaster.
I wasn't a huge fan of cooking, if I was honest. It kept my hands busy, but my mind tended to wander because I didn't find cooking all that engaging mentally. Now, however, I focused the entirety of my attention on the task in front of me, because I needed this to wow her. I wanted her to be completely blown away by what someone who knew what they were doing could do with something this simple.
So a few spices went into the mashed and blended eggs as the toaster ticked down. Normally, I just added a little bit of salt, but I used several others to enhance things even more, and I had to remind myself not to overdo it.
Medea watched me work silently and without commenting. Come to think of it, wasn't there something about how she wanted to learn how to cook herself, but wasn't very good at it? I wasn't sure that was actually something about her that I remembered or if it was just a quirk I had imagined up somewhere, though.
Either way, it only took a few minutes to put everything together and a few more to cook it. Eggs were quick like that. And like I'd purposefully timed it to work out that way, the toast popped up, crisp and brown, just as the eggs finished.
Once it was all piled onto a plate — with the jam spread over the toast in a thin layer — I took it over to her at the little table sitting in the corner and set it down with silverware. She hesitated only for a moment, and then took her fork and knife and tentatively started in.
While she did that, I grabbed myself a glass and some water, then unwrapped a protein bar and leaned back against the countertop, eyes fixed on her.
And the judges are conferring on the score now, I thought as I watched her eat, approximating my best "Iron Chef announcer."
Slowly, her face changed, and she went from cautious to pleasantly surprised. Her pace picked up, and the hesitation disappeared. She wasn't shoveling, but she was definitely eating faster than what I thought of as normal speed.
Something in my stomach fluttered, anxious, so I distracted myself some more.
I don't know, Jim, I imagined another commentator saying. The performance was simple, but definitely top notch. I can't imagine the score being any lower than a seven, but it would be a complete travesty if they didn't at least award an eight.
After the eggs, she went to the toast, and a pleased little hum actually escaped her when she tasted the tart sweetness of the raspberry jam. She ate the second piece with something approaching relish, and she even closed her eyes to savor the last bite.
And it looks like the panel is about to come to a decision…
"So?" I asked when she was done.
Small spots of red bloomed across her cheeks, like she'd forgotten I was even there, and she coughed awkwardly into her fist. I could practically see the thought in her head, how she wished she had her cowl up so she could hide her face. "It was adequate."
I smothered a smile.
Full tens across the board, Jim.
"I'll make sure to make enough food to bring some back for you at dinner, then."
The last of my protein bar was shoved into my mouth and summarily eaten, and then I drained the last of my water. My glass went into the sink, where I could wash it later.
I would have to deprive myself of some leftovers, but if trying my best with some scrambled eggs got that kind of reception? I'd be an idiot not to get her three full meals every day.
"That's not necessary," she began, trying to sound firm and stern, but she'd let enough of her walls slip, if only for that moment, that I could see right through it. "Really, it isn't."
"No," I agreed, "but I want to do it anyway."
I left before she could muster a response, feeling much lighter than when I had walked in through that backdoor. There we go — my first victory in the war to win Medea over.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Yukio gets taken down a few notches.
I know I've said this before, but the Celtic martial arts were no joke. Also, I dun goofed partway through the chapter and was backtracking "Sword Breaker," and then had a moment, "D'oh. I should just look at the OG text from the Tain and see what it's called there!" My own mistake gave birth to that moment where Aife goes, "That's technically correct, but only technically."
I know I've said this before, but the Celtic martial arts were no joke. Also, I dun goofed partway through the chapter and was backtracking "Sword Breaker," and then had a moment, "D'oh. I should just look at the OG text from the Tain and see what it's called there!" My own mistake gave birth to that moment where Aife goes, "That's technically correct, but only technically."
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Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Magic is bullshit.
To be honest, I was expecting more Piccolo-school of training.
BOOST!!!
Like a work of art.
Well, maybe you should have written a manual for it.
Just call it "The Gate of Bullshit" to his face. The indignation he'd feel over that should buy you few seconds.
She probably hoped differently.
Makes sense.
It's too late to start running now, Yukio.
Yes, and it is a very big stomach.
That is very true.
Eh, all of that would go to her butt, anyway.
View: https://youtu.be/Tk8wHXpuboQ?t=109
This is what happens when you read too much fanfiction. Canon and fanon start blurring.
Heh, nice.
Good man. You have learned one reason why Shirou finds feeding Saber such a delight.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Oh, snap! I missed a great moment for some ruby text! Hang on, give me a minute, lemme go back and fix it...
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
There we go!
Strictly speaking, "Bruud" is the "sword" and "gine" is the "breaking," but it's getting treated as a singular phrase for the purposes of the ruby text instead of separate words.
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who is Reikan? did i forget someone?
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Issei's older brother. A monk at Ryudo Temple.
Chapter 13: A Woman’s Standards
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter 13: A Woman's Standards
To my utter delight, Medea received the leftovers of my dinner with Rin (attended with hastily applied concealer on the back of my right hand to cover my Command Spells) that night even better than she did my scrambled eggs. She refused to show exactly how much she enjoyed it, of course, and merely described it as "adequate," but she wasn't nearly as good at hiding her immediate reactions as she ate as she thought she was.
Truly, it seemed that the way to Medea's heart would be through her stomach.
More telling was the fact that she was waiting for me in the kitchen the next morning, hovering about like she didn't quite know what to do while she waited but didn't want to leave either. The only thing missing was her wringing her hands in indecision and chewing uncertainly on her bottom lip.
Cooking was one of the things she didn't know much about, I remembered again. Something about playing DS games in her spare time to try and learn how? I still wasn't sure if that was true or something I'd imagined somewhere along the line, but I lost nothing by betting on this particular horse, did I?
"I can teach you, if you want," I offered to her slyly.
"I'm no one's housewife," she retorted, but it lacked some of the heat that I would have expected if she really meant it.
"I'm not asking you to be," I assured her. "But some people find it relaxing to just turn the rest of their brain off and focus only on preparing the meal. Learning to cook isn't the worst way of passing the time while we wait for things to get started for real, is it?"
This time, she really did bite her bottom lip. I could see her desire to learn warring with her general distrust of me and the situation, could practically hear the cogs in her head turning as she weighed the pros and cons and tried to look for some angle on how I might use this to take advantage of her, only to come up short, because there really wasn't a way to do that. Not subtly, anyway.
Several long minutes passed as she fought with herself over it, and I busied myself with making us another simple breakfast in the meantime, leaving her to decide on her own. A gentle touch, I told myself. If I pushed too hard or came on like I was pressuring her, then her walls would spring right back up and I'd lose my chance. The more I seemed to care about it, the more suspicious she would be of agreeing to it.
So I just had to be nonchalant. Act like it didn't matter to me if she turned me down. As long as she didn't think it was part of some scheme or ploy, then she just might take me up on it.
"No," she eventually allowed, "I suppose it wouldn't be." She mustered herself. "Very well. Where do we begin?"
I smiled. "Well, like I said, breakfast isn't really the place to go all-out, but that's probably why it's a better place to start. You can do any number of things with eggs, but that just means that there's an equal number of ways to mess them up."
I stepped to the side and turned halfway towards her, gesturing to the spot next to me.
"Here. Let me show you what I mean."
She hesitated for a moment longer, and then slowly walked over to stand beside me, and I was struck then by the fact that she was actually only tall enough that the top of her head reached my shoulder. That had to put her somewhere around 160 centimeters, which was right around the same height as Rin.
Funny how those figures you read about always seemed so larger than life, but when you actually got the chance to meet them, they were actually pretty average in terms of their proportions.
"So one of the first elements of cooking is knowing what goes with what," I began, like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. "That might sound kind of daunting, but it's less about specific spices — memorizing that just comes with experience — and more about knowing what sort of flavors work together and which ones just don't mix…"
I walked her through the process of making scrambled eggs, a decidedly more Western dish than the sort of egg dishes common in Japan, but so easy to make that it was hard to screw them up. Every decision along the way was explained calmly and patiently, and she observed the whole thing with a solemn, serious expression on her face, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, and her mouth pulled into a tight line.
It was probably the first time since I'd rescued her that I really thought of her as cute.
"For eggs in particular, you can make them any number of ways with any number of spices or extra ingredients," I finished as I scraped them out of the skillet and onto a pair of plates. "It's not my favorite, but I'll introduce you to omelets tomorrow morning. Omurice is more involved than I usually like to get at breakfast, but it can be delicious when prepared right."
"Omurice?" she asked around her fork, already digging into her own food.
"Rice omelets, basically," I answered. "Like I said, I'll show you tomorrow."
We ate most of the rest of breakfast in silence, interspersed with a handful of questions about the spices I'd used or how to vary up the flavor a little bit more. I answered her patiently and calmly as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and at least for the time being, she seemed to have forgotten all of the hostility she'd been carrying around for the last couple of days.
But it had to end sometime. Nothing lasted forever, and especially not a good meal, so when I was finished eating, I set my plate in the sink to be washed later and said, "Alright, I'd better get going."
She blinked at me. "Going?"
"You could call it something of a routine," I told her. "I meet an acquaintance of mine every morning and check on the other prospective Masters to make sure nothing has gone sideways in the meantime."
And just like that, her expression closed off and her eyes shuttered. "I see. No doubt, you're convincing them that you're an angel that would never dare risk his life in some foolhardy scheme in an event as deadly as the Holy Grail War."
"After a fashion, yes." My life kind of depended on it, at least for now. "That's why I left the house for dinner last night, too. The first sign others are going to have that I might have become a Master is if I change up my routine. As long as I continue on as though nothing's happened, they won't have any reason to suspect that anything has."
Her eyes immediately went to my right hand. "And yet, all any of them needs to do to confirm it is get a look at the back of your hand."
"Ah." I grimaced. "Yeah, I've…been trying to work out a more permanent solution to that. I can hide them up to a point, but other Masters will be able to sense them once they become Masters themselves, which will make hiding them harder than just wearing gloves or disguising them with makeup."
But was that concern I detected from her? It was hard to tell where that line was. Was she legitimately worried about my safety, or was she just calling me stupid for taking the risk? She gave no hints in either direction, not even her brow knitting together with worry. She was too practiced at keeping her thoughts to herself to let them loose that easily.
"I see," was all she said.
And then she turned away and left the room without another word, leaving me to stand there, bewildered, and stare after her.
"…It's way too early in the morning for this."
I gave up on trying to puzzle it out for the time being and got moving, finishing my morning ablutions in solitude as I tried not to think too hard about Medea and what she was up to. If I started in on analyzing every little detail, then I'd eventually work myself up into a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theories and borrow stress.
Like that time when I was ten and convinced that Kirei was onto me because I'd had him removed from his status as my and Rin's guardian. Even now, I still wasn't sure that he didn't have some kind of suspicion about me, so I was doubly sure to avoid him as much as possible.
As I pulled on the pair of gloves I'd worn the day previous and made my way towards the front door, Aífe shimmered into existence in front of me, arms crossed.
A sigh hissed out of my mouth. "You're going to follow me again, aren't you?"
"You expected anything else?" she retorted with an arched brow.
"In hindsight, I really shouldn't have. This is going to be a daily thing, isn't it?"
"I don't know," she said, almost coy, "shouldn't you be the one telling me that? Is this going to be a daily thing?"
"I've already explained to you why I can't afford to stop," I said by way of answering.
"Then you already have your answer," she replied. "Until she performs her own summoning and it won't be feasible for me to follow you without being detected, consider me your shadow for the purposes of ensuring your safety." She smirked. "Even then, if that cloak you wanted made pans out, I should be able to follow you without being detected by other Servants or Masters."
Yeah, there was that little wrinkle, wasn't there? Well, it wasn't like there weren't going to be downsides to this whole situation, and frankly, if one of my Servants keeping an eye on me whenever I was out and about was the worst thing I had to put up with, then it would have been an absolute blessing. Minor inconveniences tended to be better than major problems that way.
"I know better than to think it's worth getting into an argument with you over this." Let alone wasting a Command Spell over something so stupid and insignificant. "But I'm expecting you to be unnoticeable. We're too early into this to risk being discovered so soon."
She snorted. "Contrary to what some might have liked to think, Master, I do in fact understand the concept of discretion and what it is the better part of."
"So long as we're clear on that." I took a deep, bracing breath. "Okay. We should get going."
She faded away again, disappearing back into spirit form, and I slipped my shoes on before stepping out of the house and into the cool winter air.
Rin was waiting for me again in front of our ancestral house, shivering a little in the cold, with her hands tucked into the pockets of her red coat and her shoulders hunched in on herself. She straightened when she saw me, rolling her shoulders back.
"Waiting for me again?" I teased her. "My, how is a man to take such dedication?"
"Exactly how I said you should yesterday," she replied flatly. "It's easier to just do this than it is to deal with your disappointed looks if I went on ahead without you."
"In other words, this is just a sign of how much you care about me," I turned it back around on her.
The tips of her ears turned red, although some of that might have been from the chill in the air, because the tip of her nose was starting to turn a similar color.
"Whatever," she said. "Can we get going now? I don't want to be late because you took up so much time trying to be funny!"
"I'm sorry," I said with my most realistic fake sincerity. "Perhaps I can make it up to you? You look cold. Maybe we could share some body heat, to keep away the chill."
She made a disgusted sound in her throat, her cheeks now warming to match her ears, and she whirled away from me to start walking. I smothered a laugh, but couldn't stop myself from smiling as I took several quick steps to catch up with her.
"So how are things without me around to lighten up the mood of that old place?" I asked her.
"You've only been gone a few days," she said dryly. "You were gone for six months last time, remember? I've barely had enough time to realize you're not there, let alone start missing that ugly mug of yours."
Translation: she was feeling a bit lonely without me there, but she didn't want to admit it and she wasn't going to ask me to move back in anytime soon.
"Ugly, huh." I rubbed my chin, as though feeling for imperfections. "Weren't you the one who was just recently telling me that I was still the most popular boy in school, even though I graduated three years ago?"
"Sure," she agreed easily. "Don't ask me how, though, because it doesn't make any sense to me. My only theory is that normal schoolgirls have things so easy that there's nothing but fluff between their ears."
Was it bad that I kind of agreed with her? Not about the fluff, but half the reason I had turned down that girl from a few weeks back was because she was a schoolgirl who had no idea what was going on with my life and was in no place to help me with it. Our lived experiences were simply too different.
"Does that mean it's the same for all the boys who want to date you?"
"No," she replied succinctly. "It's just that their brains are all stuck in the wrong head. It's no wonder they're so stupid when they're squeezed down into something so tiny. It's a miracle any of them got into high school at all, let alone graduate."
I couldn't stop myself from snorting, and I hid my laughter behind my hand. How crass of you, Rin.
"What does that mean for Shinji, then?" I asked slyly.
"Shinji's special," she said. "He's just a sentient ball of seaweed that grew into the shape of a person."
No, tell me what you really think, Rin. As long as she was willing to wax poetic about what a slimeball Matou Shinji was, I was willing to sit there and listen.
I went for the throat. "And Emiya?"
Her cheeks colored a little more, but her poker face was strong enough that she didn't give anything else away. "A different kind of idiot," she said aloud. "He may not be a hormonal mess, but he's too much of a goody two-shoes to realize that he's being taken advantage of. Even if he does have his admirable traits, that side of him at least is just too gullible."
Ouch. She really wasn't going to pull any punches here, was she? Well, I had my own preferences for how Emiya's love life would turn out, so dissuading my twin sister from pursuing him was all the more for the better.
Those two self-sacrificing idiots deserved each other, after all. For two people who selfishly pursued ideals of selflessness, there should be some reward, even if it was just two weeks of relative respite with someone who completed them.
"When you put it like that, I must be some kind of unicorn," I said, amused.
She snorted. "Why? Because you turned down Nagano?"
"Nagano?"
Was that the name of the girl who had tried to hand me a confession letter?
"Nagano Miyabi," Rin said by way of answering. "It was all over school by lunchtime. Half the girls in our year wanted to console her, and the other half were silently cheering about the fact that she hadn't stolen you away from them. Ayako got a kick out of it."
I sighed. "Of course she did. How cruel that my own suffering brings her such amusement."
Nagano Miyabi, huh? Cute name for a cute girl. Unfortunately, it did nothing to change the core problems behind why I'd rejected her in the first place, and I just wasn't cold enough to take advantage of her affections for my own ends.
Yes, I was aware of the irony. The situation with Bazett was wholly different, though, because the end of the world was a little more serious and a lot harder to deal with than a case of blue balls.
"Stop being so melodramatic," said Rin. "If you didn't react the way you do, she wouldn't have anywhere near as much fun teasing you about it."
"It honestly mystifies me that you take it in stride so much easier," I told her. "There's no way you haven't gotten confessions like that yourself."
She snorted. "Of course it's easier. I just got done saying it, didn't I? All of them are only thinking about one thing, so there's nothing else I need to know."
"My, that is cruel," I remarked. "How many boys have been crushed under your heel by that sort of sentiment?"
"It's not like they really know anything about me." She waved it off without a problem. "How could I possibly think any of them is a suitable partner when none of them know me anywhere near as completely as you do?"
She caught me so off guard that my feet actually forgot that I was supposed to be walking and I stopped cold, my eyebrows rising towards my hairline as something warm kindled fondly in my chest. She stopped, too, and turned to look at me. "What?"
Did she not realize what she'd just admitted to?
"Is that the metric you use to decide who you want to date?" I asked, almost unable to believe it. "That they have to measure up to me?"
For a second, she wasn't phased, and then the words worked their way through her brain and she started to make the right connections. Red bloomed across her face anew, and she spun away with a whirl of her hair so that I couldn't see the proof of her embarrassment.
No. This was bad. If she was anything other than my twin sister, I could have been happy, but because she was, this was the one scenario where something like that could only end in tragedy.
Even if it felt like my most closely guarded fantasy coming true.
"Th-that's not what I'm saying at all!" she insisted. "D-don't flatter yourself so much, you idiot! What I'm saying is, I-I can't even consider a relationship with someone who o-only knows the small part of myself he sees at school!"
Now, isn't this interesting? Aífe's voice murmured across our bond. A cold chill swept down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the weather.
Fuck me, I'd completely forgotten she was even here.
"W-well, I suppose that's only fair," I tried, attempting to regain my own composure. "After all, there's no one in this entire country who could possibly measure up to me. If those were your standards, you'd never find a boyfriend at all."
Rin huffed. "I-idiot," she muttered under her breath.
Yes, I am. An idiot who cared in ways I shouldn't for people I shouldn't, all because the man I'd been in a past life had held an affection for them. But those lingering sentiments were also the reason I cared enough about Medea to rescue her and about Bazett enough to save her life, so on the overall, I thought it was a fair enough trade.
No matter how strange it made my relationship with Rin.
An awkward silence hung between us for the rest of the trip to the school, and this time, there was no Mitsuzuri Ayako to break up the tension as we arrived at the front gate, so we had to stand around for a few minutes, neither of us willing to break it.
Eventually, Rin mustered up the courage, and a little louder than she probably meant to, she said, "A-anyway, I'm going to class. I'll see you later on for dinner tonight."
"Right," I mumbled.
"Right," she echoed, and then stood there for another long moment. She shook her head. "Right. See you."
And without waiting for a response, she spun around and made her way towards the main building. I lingered at the front gate for about thirty seconds more, deliberately ignoring the stares of the students who passed me by, and then I shook my own head in an attempt to clear it of the less than helpful thoughts.
It didn't really work.
Halfway distracted, I turned towards the Archery Club's clubhouse and made my own way over, and when I entered, the club's practice was in full swing. Mindful of Aífe's presence now, I focused on the two most relevant members and asked her, Do you see them?
Them? Aífe asked in turn.
The girl with the ribbon in her hair and the boy with wavy hair that looks like seaweed, I clarified.
Seaweed… Ah. If she were materialized, there would probably be a smirk on her face. It really does resemble seaweed, doesn't it?
Matou Shinji and Matou Sakura, I told her.
Matou…? As in, Matou Zouken? This dangerous, 300 year old founder? She asked.
The very same, I confirmed.
Matou Shinji… Yes, exactly like that picture you showed us, said Aífe. Matou Sakura, however… They look almost nothing alike. In fact, I would have to say she looks more like —
My mouth twisted into a scowl, and I cut across her, The story behind that is for later.
…I'll expect to hear it, then, she told me, probably sensing the difficulty of that discussion.
I turned around and left the archery range before Ayako could catch sight of me, pretending that I myself didn't see Nagano Miyabi trying to watch me from around the corner of the building. She wasn't anywhere near as subtle or as good at hiding as she thought she was.
The only thing I could do about that was hope that she grew out of it and wouldn't try confessing to me again. Well, it wouldn't be long before I had to stop coming to school with Rin in the mornings anyway, so maybe her passions would cool in my absence.
Swiftly and with purpose, I strode out of the front gate, ignoring the curious onlookers who were just now streaming in. There honestly weren't many; my daily trips with Rin had become old news, so most of the school already knew I was coming here in the mornings anyway.
I started in the direction of my new home — which was coincidentally the same direction as my "old" home — but about halfway there, I veered off along a side road and towards an abandoned plot that really had been left in foreclosure hell when the old owners died. Since I didn't much care who it belonged to, all that really mattered was that it was a place I could go and be undisturbed.
It was almost childishly easy to slip in through the front door unnoticed, and although sheets had been laid out overtop of the furniture to help preserve them, a thick layer of dust coated the floors. My nose wrinkled, but there was nothing to be done about it. I certainly wasn't going to go about and clean the damn place.
"No one should bother us here," I announced aloud.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than did Aífe shimmer into existence, glancing around the place disdainfully. Yeah, it wasn't exactly the Ritz Carlton, was it?
But for what we needed to talk about…
I crossed my arms, feeling suddenly very vulnerable as I gathered the courage to confess one of the secrets I had kept from her and Medea. Unease squirmed in my stomach.
"If you've noticed the similarities, then it can't be helped at this point," I said, like I was trying to convince myself as much as I was her.
"There are superficial similarities between Matou Shinji and 'Matou' Sakura," Aífe noted. There was no accusation of any sort in her voice, just observation. "But in terms of facial structure, the resemblance is much stronger between her and your twin sister, Rin."
"Because it's not a coincidence," I admitted. The urge to move was too strong, so I started pacing along the dusty floor, my shoes thunking on the hardwood. "Sakura is…"
But no, simply coming out and saying it was too simple, wasn't it? It lacked depth. I needed to add some background information, first.
I glanced at Aífe. "You understand what it's like for families of magi, don't you? Even if both of your children are excellent, you can only have one heir. It's part of what makes the Edelfelt and their magical attribute so unique."
Aífe's lips pulled tight and her brow knitted together. Stiffly, she said, "I understand the concept."
Right. Because she'd been passed over for her sister. Of course she understood.
"I wasn't so excellent," I said bluntly, because my lack of talent wasn't important, just what it meant for my family. "Rin was born with an incredibly rare magical attribute herself, so she was an easy choice to make the heir, and Sakura…"
I stopped, readjusted, and added some more context. "When it comes to the quality of my magic circuits, the amount of magical energy I can store, and in general, just raw power, all three of us are equals. The difference is, my magical attribute is ordinary. Normal. Unremarkable. It was safe enough for me to simply marry into a prominent family of magi, because everything that makes me extraordinary is something other families desire for their bloodlines, not their workshops. For Rin and Sakura, however…"
My wife's womb was simply too bountiful, my father had said. Dear old Dad never knew exactly how right he was. Of course, he could never have predicted the ways in which that worked out, either. My element might have been ordinary, but something about my Origin had allowed something extra to tag along when "Tohsaka Yukio" was born.
"They're special?" Aífe prompted, and I realized with a start that I'd trailed off into thought.
"Too special," I agreed easily. "Too unique. Their magical attributes were so powerful that there was no way either of them could have been kept away from the world's Mysteries. The only way to protect them was for both of them to be the heirs of a long and strong enough magical lineage. Rin was to be the Tohsaka's, which left Sakura at the mercy of whatever supernatural forces decided to make a victim of her. Fortunately," I spat the word, "the Matou have been in decline for the past several generations. They had no heir, and wouldn't you know it, the Tohsaka and the Matou have been allies since the founding of the Grail War."
Aífe made a noise of understanding. "So your family gave her away."
"And Zouken had barely gotten his hands on her before he started implanting his Crest Worms into her body," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I failed. "Through her…her…"
I closed my eyes, but the image was seared on the back of my eyelids. Sakura, not even seven years old, lying naked on the floor as she was violated by Zouken's parasites. My body trembled with the force of my impotent rage, and I took a shaky breath to try and bring myself back under control.
It didn't help.
"The uterus is their favorite meal."
The words clawed themselves out of my throat, raw and horrible, because even just saying it so indirectly twisted my gut up into knots. This, the terrible knowledge I had lived with for ten years, was a major part of why my early teens had been such a nightmare.
My previous self had been distanced from this. The person I had inherited hadn't been so moved by Sakura's plight, because he had the buffer of "it's only a story," and the heavy handedness of her suffering had been a step too far for his "suspension of disbelief."
I didn't have the luxury of such a thing.
"What?" Aífe asked, uncharacteristically quiet.
"The Crest Worms can fit into any orifice that will stretch enough to accommodate their bodies," I told her, and I felt sick just saying it. If my voice shook and cracked, neither of us brought attention to it. "But females have one that is conveniently linked, both biologically and conceptually, to gestation. There are fewer barriers to their integration into the host's body."
Or Zouken was simply a cruel old bastard. Both could be true, and it didn't matter to the end result.
"And Sakura was…"
"Not even seven years old."
"So killing Zouken…" she muttered dangerously. I couldn't bring myself to look at her.
"I didn't lie," I said in a firmer voice than I would have thought myself capable of just then. "Zouken is every inch the threat I told you and Caster he is. Nothing I said about him or his probable actions is in any way false." I let out a long, slow breath, and the anger dulled into a cool, simmering resolve. "But killing him is just as much about saving one young girl as it is about saving the world."
It was selfish, but… Well, motivations didn't have to be simple or singular, did they? What did it matter that I also happened to have a more personal reason for wanting Zouken and Kirei dead? The really important part was that it would mean preventing a greater catastrophe, whatever else it accomplished in the process.
"And if you get to be the one to do it, well… So much the better, right?"
"It's a happy bonus," I agreed neutrally. "Saving the world means killing the two men who have done my family the most harm."
She snorted. "Don't mistake my meaning, Yukio."
Finally, I turned to look at her, and she was…angry, but not at me. It occurred to me, then, that it was probably the first time she'd ever used my actual name, instead of just calling me "Master."
"I understand revenge," she said. "The feelings that drive it, too. I won't be chastising you for wanting it or even pursuing it. My own wish is born of something just as petty."
"Rivalry with your sister."
"And revenge against the man who took everything from me, in the end," she agreed. "If you're expecting me to tell you to abandon the idea, you're looking at the wrong hero. I'm not some high-minded idealist who thinks it won't accomplish anything." She smirked. "What I will do is refuse to let you throw your life away chasing it. You don't make one move against either of them until we're all ready. Everything we need to do to ensure they die comes first. Only then will we crush them both beneath our boots."
Something bloomed in my chest. It wasn't warm, even though it was tinged with satisfaction. No, it was cold and hungry, and it was content to wait patiently for the woman who had just promised to feed it.
"Aífe," I said, using her true name now myself, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine."
To my utter delight, Medea received the leftovers of my dinner with Rin (attended with hastily applied concealer on the back of my right hand to cover my Command Spells) that night even better than she did my scrambled eggs. She refused to show exactly how much she enjoyed it, of course, and merely described it as "adequate," but she wasn't nearly as good at hiding her immediate reactions as she ate as she thought she was.
Truly, it seemed that the way to Medea's heart would be through her stomach.
More telling was the fact that she was waiting for me in the kitchen the next morning, hovering about like she didn't quite know what to do while she waited but didn't want to leave either. The only thing missing was her wringing her hands in indecision and chewing uncertainly on her bottom lip.
Cooking was one of the things she didn't know much about, I remembered again. Something about playing DS games in her spare time to try and learn how? I still wasn't sure if that was true or something I'd imagined somewhere along the line, but I lost nothing by betting on this particular horse, did I?
"I can teach you, if you want," I offered to her slyly.
"I'm no one's housewife," she retorted, but it lacked some of the heat that I would have expected if she really meant it.
"I'm not asking you to be," I assured her. "But some people find it relaxing to just turn the rest of their brain off and focus only on preparing the meal. Learning to cook isn't the worst way of passing the time while we wait for things to get started for real, is it?"
This time, she really did bite her bottom lip. I could see her desire to learn warring with her general distrust of me and the situation, could practically hear the cogs in her head turning as she weighed the pros and cons and tried to look for some angle on how I might use this to take advantage of her, only to come up short, because there really wasn't a way to do that. Not subtly, anyway.
Several long minutes passed as she fought with herself over it, and I busied myself with making us another simple breakfast in the meantime, leaving her to decide on her own. A gentle touch, I told myself. If I pushed too hard or came on like I was pressuring her, then her walls would spring right back up and I'd lose my chance. The more I seemed to care about it, the more suspicious she would be of agreeing to it.
So I just had to be nonchalant. Act like it didn't matter to me if she turned me down. As long as she didn't think it was part of some scheme or ploy, then she just might take me up on it.
"No," she eventually allowed, "I suppose it wouldn't be." She mustered herself. "Very well. Where do we begin?"
I smiled. "Well, like I said, breakfast isn't really the place to go all-out, but that's probably why it's a better place to start. You can do any number of things with eggs, but that just means that there's an equal number of ways to mess them up."
I stepped to the side and turned halfway towards her, gesturing to the spot next to me.
"Here. Let me show you what I mean."
She hesitated for a moment longer, and then slowly walked over to stand beside me, and I was struck then by the fact that she was actually only tall enough that the top of her head reached my shoulder. That had to put her somewhere around 160 centimeters, which was right around the same height as Rin.
Funny how those figures you read about always seemed so larger than life, but when you actually got the chance to meet them, they were actually pretty average in terms of their proportions.
"So one of the first elements of cooking is knowing what goes with what," I began, like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. "That might sound kind of daunting, but it's less about specific spices — memorizing that just comes with experience — and more about knowing what sort of flavors work together and which ones just don't mix…"
I walked her through the process of making scrambled eggs, a decidedly more Western dish than the sort of egg dishes common in Japan, but so easy to make that it was hard to screw them up. Every decision along the way was explained calmly and patiently, and she observed the whole thing with a solemn, serious expression on her face, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, and her mouth pulled into a tight line.
It was probably the first time since I'd rescued her that I really thought of her as cute.
"For eggs in particular, you can make them any number of ways with any number of spices or extra ingredients," I finished as I scraped them out of the skillet and onto a pair of plates. "It's not my favorite, but I'll introduce you to omelets tomorrow morning. Omurice is more involved than I usually like to get at breakfast, but it can be delicious when prepared right."
"Omurice?" she asked around her fork, already digging into her own food.
"Rice omelets, basically," I answered. "Like I said, I'll show you tomorrow."
We ate most of the rest of breakfast in silence, interspersed with a handful of questions about the spices I'd used or how to vary up the flavor a little bit more. I answered her patiently and calmly as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and at least for the time being, she seemed to have forgotten all of the hostility she'd been carrying around for the last couple of days.
But it had to end sometime. Nothing lasted forever, and especially not a good meal, so when I was finished eating, I set my plate in the sink to be washed later and said, "Alright, I'd better get going."
She blinked at me. "Going?"
"You could call it something of a routine," I told her. "I meet an acquaintance of mine every morning and check on the other prospective Masters to make sure nothing has gone sideways in the meantime."
And just like that, her expression closed off and her eyes shuttered. "I see. No doubt, you're convincing them that you're an angel that would never dare risk his life in some foolhardy scheme in an event as deadly as the Holy Grail War."
"After a fashion, yes." My life kind of depended on it, at least for now. "That's why I left the house for dinner last night, too. The first sign others are going to have that I might have become a Master is if I change up my routine. As long as I continue on as though nothing's happened, they won't have any reason to suspect that anything has."
Her eyes immediately went to my right hand. "And yet, all any of them needs to do to confirm it is get a look at the back of your hand."
"Ah." I grimaced. "Yeah, I've…been trying to work out a more permanent solution to that. I can hide them up to a point, but other Masters will be able to sense them once they become Masters themselves, which will make hiding them harder than just wearing gloves or disguising them with makeup."
But was that concern I detected from her? It was hard to tell where that line was. Was she legitimately worried about my safety, or was she just calling me stupid for taking the risk? She gave no hints in either direction, not even her brow knitting together with worry. She was too practiced at keeping her thoughts to herself to let them loose that easily.
"I see," was all she said.
And then she turned away and left the room without another word, leaving me to stand there, bewildered, and stare after her.
"…It's way too early in the morning for this."
I gave up on trying to puzzle it out for the time being and got moving, finishing my morning ablutions in solitude as I tried not to think too hard about Medea and what she was up to. If I started in on analyzing every little detail, then I'd eventually work myself up into a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theories and borrow stress.
Like that time when I was ten and convinced that Kirei was onto me because I'd had him removed from his status as my and Rin's guardian. Even now, I still wasn't sure that he didn't have some kind of suspicion about me, so I was doubly sure to avoid him as much as possible.
As I pulled on the pair of gloves I'd worn the day previous and made my way towards the front door, Aífe shimmered into existence in front of me, arms crossed.
A sigh hissed out of my mouth. "You're going to follow me again, aren't you?"
"You expected anything else?" she retorted with an arched brow.
"In hindsight, I really shouldn't have. This is going to be a daily thing, isn't it?"
"I don't know," she said, almost coy, "shouldn't you be the one telling me that? Is this going to be a daily thing?"
"I've already explained to you why I can't afford to stop," I said by way of answering.
"Then you already have your answer," she replied. "Until she performs her own summoning and it won't be feasible for me to follow you without being detected, consider me your shadow for the purposes of ensuring your safety." She smirked. "Even then, if that cloak you wanted made pans out, I should be able to follow you without being detected by other Servants or Masters."
Yeah, there was that little wrinkle, wasn't there? Well, it wasn't like there weren't going to be downsides to this whole situation, and frankly, if one of my Servants keeping an eye on me whenever I was out and about was the worst thing I had to put up with, then it would have been an absolute blessing. Minor inconveniences tended to be better than major problems that way.
"I know better than to think it's worth getting into an argument with you over this." Let alone wasting a Command Spell over something so stupid and insignificant. "But I'm expecting you to be unnoticeable. We're too early into this to risk being discovered so soon."
She snorted. "Contrary to what some might have liked to think, Master, I do in fact understand the concept of discretion and what it is the better part of."
"So long as we're clear on that." I took a deep, bracing breath. "Okay. We should get going."
She faded away again, disappearing back into spirit form, and I slipped my shoes on before stepping out of the house and into the cool winter air.
Rin was waiting for me again in front of our ancestral house, shivering a little in the cold, with her hands tucked into the pockets of her red coat and her shoulders hunched in on herself. She straightened when she saw me, rolling her shoulders back.
"Waiting for me again?" I teased her. "My, how is a man to take such dedication?"
"Exactly how I said you should yesterday," she replied flatly. "It's easier to just do this than it is to deal with your disappointed looks if I went on ahead without you."
"In other words, this is just a sign of how much you care about me," I turned it back around on her.
The tips of her ears turned red, although some of that might have been from the chill in the air, because the tip of her nose was starting to turn a similar color.
"Whatever," she said. "Can we get going now? I don't want to be late because you took up so much time trying to be funny!"
"I'm sorry," I said with my most realistic fake sincerity. "Perhaps I can make it up to you? You look cold. Maybe we could share some body heat, to keep away the chill."
She made a disgusted sound in her throat, her cheeks now warming to match her ears, and she whirled away from me to start walking. I smothered a laugh, but couldn't stop myself from smiling as I took several quick steps to catch up with her.
"So how are things without me around to lighten up the mood of that old place?" I asked her.
"You've only been gone a few days," she said dryly. "You were gone for six months last time, remember? I've barely had enough time to realize you're not there, let alone start missing that ugly mug of yours."
Translation: she was feeling a bit lonely without me there, but she didn't want to admit it and she wasn't going to ask me to move back in anytime soon.
"Ugly, huh." I rubbed my chin, as though feeling for imperfections. "Weren't you the one who was just recently telling me that I was still the most popular boy in school, even though I graduated three years ago?"
"Sure," she agreed easily. "Don't ask me how, though, because it doesn't make any sense to me. My only theory is that normal schoolgirls have things so easy that there's nothing but fluff between their ears."
Was it bad that I kind of agreed with her? Not about the fluff, but half the reason I had turned down that girl from a few weeks back was because she was a schoolgirl who had no idea what was going on with my life and was in no place to help me with it. Our lived experiences were simply too different.
"Does that mean it's the same for all the boys who want to date you?"
"No," she replied succinctly. "It's just that their brains are all stuck in the wrong head. It's no wonder they're so stupid when they're squeezed down into something so tiny. It's a miracle any of them got into high school at all, let alone graduate."
I couldn't stop myself from snorting, and I hid my laughter behind my hand. How crass of you, Rin.
"What does that mean for Shinji, then?" I asked slyly.
"Shinji's special," she said. "He's just a sentient ball of seaweed that grew into the shape of a person."
No, tell me what you really think, Rin. As long as she was willing to wax poetic about what a slimeball Matou Shinji was, I was willing to sit there and listen.
I went for the throat. "And Emiya?"
Her cheeks colored a little more, but her poker face was strong enough that she didn't give anything else away. "A different kind of idiot," she said aloud. "He may not be a hormonal mess, but he's too much of a goody two-shoes to realize that he's being taken advantage of. Even if he does have his admirable traits, that side of him at least is just too gullible."
Ouch. She really wasn't going to pull any punches here, was she? Well, I had my own preferences for how Emiya's love life would turn out, so dissuading my twin sister from pursuing him was all the more for the better.
Those two self-sacrificing idiots deserved each other, after all. For two people who selfishly pursued ideals of selflessness, there should be some reward, even if it was just two weeks of relative respite with someone who completed them.
"When you put it like that, I must be some kind of unicorn," I said, amused.
She snorted. "Why? Because you turned down Nagano?"
"Nagano?"
Was that the name of the girl who had tried to hand me a confession letter?
"Nagano Miyabi," Rin said by way of answering. "It was all over school by lunchtime. Half the girls in our year wanted to console her, and the other half were silently cheering about the fact that she hadn't stolen you away from them. Ayako got a kick out of it."
I sighed. "Of course she did. How cruel that my own suffering brings her such amusement."
Nagano Miyabi, huh? Cute name for a cute girl. Unfortunately, it did nothing to change the core problems behind why I'd rejected her in the first place, and I just wasn't cold enough to take advantage of her affections for my own ends.
Yes, I was aware of the irony. The situation with Bazett was wholly different, though, because the end of the world was a little more serious and a lot harder to deal with than a case of blue balls.
"Stop being so melodramatic," said Rin. "If you didn't react the way you do, she wouldn't have anywhere near as much fun teasing you about it."
"It honestly mystifies me that you take it in stride so much easier," I told her. "There's no way you haven't gotten confessions like that yourself."
She snorted. "Of course it's easier. I just got done saying it, didn't I? All of them are only thinking about one thing, so there's nothing else I need to know."
"My, that is cruel," I remarked. "How many boys have been crushed under your heel by that sort of sentiment?"
"It's not like they really know anything about me." She waved it off without a problem. "How could I possibly think any of them is a suitable partner when none of them know me anywhere near as completely as you do?"
She caught me so off guard that my feet actually forgot that I was supposed to be walking and I stopped cold, my eyebrows rising towards my hairline as something warm kindled fondly in my chest. She stopped, too, and turned to look at me. "What?"
Did she not realize what she'd just admitted to?
"Is that the metric you use to decide who you want to date?" I asked, almost unable to believe it. "That they have to measure up to me?"
For a second, she wasn't phased, and then the words worked their way through her brain and she started to make the right connections. Red bloomed across her face anew, and she spun away with a whirl of her hair so that I couldn't see the proof of her embarrassment.
No. This was bad. If she was anything other than my twin sister, I could have been happy, but because she was, this was the one scenario where something like that could only end in tragedy.
Even if it felt like my most closely guarded fantasy coming true.
"Th-that's not what I'm saying at all!" she insisted. "D-don't flatter yourself so much, you idiot! What I'm saying is, I-I can't even consider a relationship with someone who o-only knows the small part of myself he sees at school!"
Now, isn't this interesting? Aífe's voice murmured across our bond. A cold chill swept down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the weather.
Fuck me, I'd completely forgotten she was even here.
"W-well, I suppose that's only fair," I tried, attempting to regain my own composure. "After all, there's no one in this entire country who could possibly measure up to me. If those were your standards, you'd never find a boyfriend at all."
Rin huffed. "I-idiot," she muttered under her breath.
Yes, I am. An idiot who cared in ways I shouldn't for people I shouldn't, all because the man I'd been in a past life had held an affection for them. But those lingering sentiments were also the reason I cared enough about Medea to rescue her and about Bazett enough to save her life, so on the overall, I thought it was a fair enough trade.
No matter how strange it made my relationship with Rin.
An awkward silence hung between us for the rest of the trip to the school, and this time, there was no Mitsuzuri Ayako to break up the tension as we arrived at the front gate, so we had to stand around for a few minutes, neither of us willing to break it.
Eventually, Rin mustered up the courage, and a little louder than she probably meant to, she said, "A-anyway, I'm going to class. I'll see you later on for dinner tonight."
"Right," I mumbled.
"Right," she echoed, and then stood there for another long moment. She shook her head. "Right. See you."
And without waiting for a response, she spun around and made her way towards the main building. I lingered at the front gate for about thirty seconds more, deliberately ignoring the stares of the students who passed me by, and then I shook my own head in an attempt to clear it of the less than helpful thoughts.
It didn't really work.
Halfway distracted, I turned towards the Archery Club's clubhouse and made my own way over, and when I entered, the club's practice was in full swing. Mindful of Aífe's presence now, I focused on the two most relevant members and asked her, Do you see them?
Them? Aífe asked in turn.
The girl with the ribbon in her hair and the boy with wavy hair that looks like seaweed, I clarified.
Seaweed… Ah. If she were materialized, there would probably be a smirk on her face. It really does resemble seaweed, doesn't it?
Matou Shinji and Matou Sakura, I told her.
Matou…? As in, Matou Zouken? This dangerous, 300 year old founder? She asked.
The very same, I confirmed.
Matou Shinji… Yes, exactly like that picture you showed us, said Aífe. Matou Sakura, however… They look almost nothing alike. In fact, I would have to say she looks more like —
My mouth twisted into a scowl, and I cut across her, The story behind that is for later.
…I'll expect to hear it, then, she told me, probably sensing the difficulty of that discussion.
I turned around and left the archery range before Ayako could catch sight of me, pretending that I myself didn't see Nagano Miyabi trying to watch me from around the corner of the building. She wasn't anywhere near as subtle or as good at hiding as she thought she was.
The only thing I could do about that was hope that she grew out of it and wouldn't try confessing to me again. Well, it wouldn't be long before I had to stop coming to school with Rin in the mornings anyway, so maybe her passions would cool in my absence.
Swiftly and with purpose, I strode out of the front gate, ignoring the curious onlookers who were just now streaming in. There honestly weren't many; my daily trips with Rin had become old news, so most of the school already knew I was coming here in the mornings anyway.
I started in the direction of my new home — which was coincidentally the same direction as my "old" home — but about halfway there, I veered off along a side road and towards an abandoned plot that really had been left in foreclosure hell when the old owners died. Since I didn't much care who it belonged to, all that really mattered was that it was a place I could go and be undisturbed.
It was almost childishly easy to slip in through the front door unnoticed, and although sheets had been laid out overtop of the furniture to help preserve them, a thick layer of dust coated the floors. My nose wrinkled, but there was nothing to be done about it. I certainly wasn't going to go about and clean the damn place.
"No one should bother us here," I announced aloud.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than did Aífe shimmer into existence, glancing around the place disdainfully. Yeah, it wasn't exactly the Ritz Carlton, was it?
But for what we needed to talk about…
I crossed my arms, feeling suddenly very vulnerable as I gathered the courage to confess one of the secrets I had kept from her and Medea. Unease squirmed in my stomach.
"If you've noticed the similarities, then it can't be helped at this point," I said, like I was trying to convince myself as much as I was her.
"There are superficial similarities between Matou Shinji and 'Matou' Sakura," Aífe noted. There was no accusation of any sort in her voice, just observation. "But in terms of facial structure, the resemblance is much stronger between her and your twin sister, Rin."
"Because it's not a coincidence," I admitted. The urge to move was too strong, so I started pacing along the dusty floor, my shoes thunking on the hardwood. "Sakura is…"
But no, simply coming out and saying it was too simple, wasn't it? It lacked depth. I needed to add some background information, first.
I glanced at Aífe. "You understand what it's like for families of magi, don't you? Even if both of your children are excellent, you can only have one heir. It's part of what makes the Edelfelt and their magical attribute so unique."
Aífe's lips pulled tight and her brow knitted together. Stiffly, she said, "I understand the concept."
Right. Because she'd been passed over for her sister. Of course she understood.
"I wasn't so excellent," I said bluntly, because my lack of talent wasn't important, just what it meant for my family. "Rin was born with an incredibly rare magical attribute herself, so she was an easy choice to make the heir, and Sakura…"
I stopped, readjusted, and added some more context. "When it comes to the quality of my magic circuits, the amount of magical energy I can store, and in general, just raw power, all three of us are equals. The difference is, my magical attribute is ordinary. Normal. Unremarkable. It was safe enough for me to simply marry into a prominent family of magi, because everything that makes me extraordinary is something other families desire for their bloodlines, not their workshops. For Rin and Sakura, however…"
My wife's womb was simply too bountiful, my father had said. Dear old Dad never knew exactly how right he was. Of course, he could never have predicted the ways in which that worked out, either. My element might have been ordinary, but something about my Origin had allowed something extra to tag along when "Tohsaka Yukio" was born.
"They're special?" Aífe prompted, and I realized with a start that I'd trailed off into thought.
"Too special," I agreed easily. "Too unique. Their magical attributes were so powerful that there was no way either of them could have been kept away from the world's Mysteries. The only way to protect them was for both of them to be the heirs of a long and strong enough magical lineage. Rin was to be the Tohsaka's, which left Sakura at the mercy of whatever supernatural forces decided to make a victim of her. Fortunately," I spat the word, "the Matou have been in decline for the past several generations. They had no heir, and wouldn't you know it, the Tohsaka and the Matou have been allies since the founding of the Grail War."
Aífe made a noise of understanding. "So your family gave her away."
"And Zouken had barely gotten his hands on her before he started implanting his Crest Worms into her body," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I failed. "Through her…her…"
I closed my eyes, but the image was seared on the back of my eyelids. Sakura, not even seven years old, lying naked on the floor as she was violated by Zouken's parasites. My body trembled with the force of my impotent rage, and I took a shaky breath to try and bring myself back under control.
It didn't help.
"The uterus is their favorite meal."
The words clawed themselves out of my throat, raw and horrible, because even just saying it so indirectly twisted my gut up into knots. This, the terrible knowledge I had lived with for ten years, was a major part of why my early teens had been such a nightmare.
My previous self had been distanced from this. The person I had inherited hadn't been so moved by Sakura's plight, because he had the buffer of "it's only a story," and the heavy handedness of her suffering had been a step too far for his "suspension of disbelief."
I didn't have the luxury of such a thing.
"What?" Aífe asked, uncharacteristically quiet.
"The Crest Worms can fit into any orifice that will stretch enough to accommodate their bodies," I told her, and I felt sick just saying it. If my voice shook and cracked, neither of us brought attention to it. "But females have one that is conveniently linked, both biologically and conceptually, to gestation. There are fewer barriers to their integration into the host's body."
Or Zouken was simply a cruel old bastard. Both could be true, and it didn't matter to the end result.
"And Sakura was…"
"Not even seven years old."
"So killing Zouken…" she muttered dangerously. I couldn't bring myself to look at her.
"I didn't lie," I said in a firmer voice than I would have thought myself capable of just then. "Zouken is every inch the threat I told you and Caster he is. Nothing I said about him or his probable actions is in any way false." I let out a long, slow breath, and the anger dulled into a cool, simmering resolve. "But killing him is just as much about saving one young girl as it is about saving the world."
It was selfish, but… Well, motivations didn't have to be simple or singular, did they? What did it matter that I also happened to have a more personal reason for wanting Zouken and Kirei dead? The really important part was that it would mean preventing a greater catastrophe, whatever else it accomplished in the process.
"And if you get to be the one to do it, well… So much the better, right?"
"It's a happy bonus," I agreed neutrally. "Saving the world means killing the two men who have done my family the most harm."
She snorted. "Don't mistake my meaning, Yukio."
Finally, I turned to look at her, and she was…angry, but not at me. It occurred to me, then, that it was probably the first time she'd ever used my actual name, instead of just calling me "Master."
"I understand revenge," she said. "The feelings that drive it, too. I won't be chastising you for wanting it or even pursuing it. My own wish is born of something just as petty."
"Rivalry with your sister."
"And revenge against the man who took everything from me, in the end," she agreed. "If you're expecting me to tell you to abandon the idea, you're looking at the wrong hero. I'm not some high-minded idealist who thinks it won't accomplish anything." She smirked. "What I will do is refuse to let you throw your life away chasing it. You don't make one move against either of them until we're all ready. Everything we need to do to ensure they die comes first. Only then will we crush them both beneath our boots."
Something bloomed in my chest. It wasn't warm, even though it was tinged with satisfaction. No, it was cold and hungry, and it was content to wait patiently for the woman who had just promised to feed it.
"Aífe," I said, using her true name now myself, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
No, Yukio has not forgotten what Sakura has gone through. But forcing himself to dwell on it doesn't make it easier to keep a lid on his temper.
I do like how this turned out, though. It hit several good notes and laid the groundwork for a lot of things that are in the pipeline for this story.
Things will really accelerate towards the Grail War soon. There are a few more chapters left to finish the last bits of proper setup needed for the events to come to make the most sense.
I do like how this turned out, though. It hit several good notes and laid the groundwork for a lot of things that are in the pipeline for this story.
Things will really accelerate towards the Grail War soon. There are a few more chapters left to finish the last bits of proper setup needed for the events to come to make the most sense.
Thanks for the update, looking forward to more, please continue writing.
There is a reason why compatible summon can be dangerous
I'm actually very curious about what Yukio's Origin is, because that could be a potential trump card.
- Location
- Southern California
Considering that Sakura is currently 16, the 4th Grail war was a decade ago and she was in the Matou family for a year by that point....she was 5 maybe close to being 6
Seconded
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
I...think I had a reason why I wasn't revealing it, but since I can't remember what that reason was and I'm not sure it's going to come up in the story at all, okay. I'll still spoil it just in case.
"Refract and Append." Like Kiritsugu, Yukio has a dual Origin. Unlike Kiritsugu, Yukio's has entirely to do with his circumstances: because he's two people smushed together in a single body, two identities merged not flawlessly, but still seamlessly. The entire reason this story can take place is because Yukio's original "Append" Origin let him tack on his previous life's memories. This is also why Yukio has dual elements: Water was his original element, but "Refract" added Wind.
"Refract and Append." Like Kiritsugu, Yukio has a dual Origin. Unlike Kiritsugu, Yukio's has entirely to do with his circumstances: because he's two people smushed together in a single body, two identities merged not flawlessly, but still seamlessly. The entire reason this story can take place is because Yukio's original "Append" Origin let him tack on his previous life's memories. This is also why Yukio has dual elements: Water was his original element, but "Refract" added Wind.
Huh that's neat, wonder what he can do with those origins. From what he has spoken about he seems aware about what his origins are, so he probably would make use of them.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
You know what they say, way to a evil witch's heart is by giving her a good filling.
...Wait.
Ah, the point you're so deep in the fandom you can no longer tell what was canon and what was fanon.
It's just something you grow out of.
Tsundere's were made to be embarrassed.
If this was a doujinshi universe, we'd all know where this would be going.
Indeed. ShirouxSaber OTP.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQktVJiBhos
...You know, just to be clear, I was joking about this being a doujinshi universe.
Oh no!
Fucking Zouken, if he was on fire I wouldn't piss on him to pout out the flames.
"Why are there only two choices? 'Save yourself and abandon everyone else.' 'Give up on returning normal and save the world.' Why are those the only two options? Why can't I choose 'Save the world and get our original bodies back'?"
-Alphonse Elric, Full Metal Alchemist
The Night of the Hunt approaches.
My money is on that he has Imitation or Fake/Forgery as an origin, given that he does seem to be a bit of a funhouse mirror version of Shirou thats more grounded and manipulative. He has a propensity for it with the faux Excaliber, the imitation martial arts, and pretending to not be a master. That or Sacrifice, Determination, or Nothingness, all for different reasons.
It all really depends where his memories originated from. I was thinking that the MC could even be a non-selfaware daemon or a fragment of an outer god, given the ritual he was involved in was all about summoning extradimensional horrors by using him as a sacrifice, but was interrupted before being fully completed. He may think he's Yukio, but he's may not be, or only partially. It'd also link him closer to Scathatch and Aife, because Land of Shadows
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
The Fraga are mostly disconnected from the Association, IIRC, so no, Bazett isn't the third contract. I actually already have the third contract in mind, although I don't doubt that someone will guess who it is long before it ever gets mentioned in-story.