I find it rather ironic that currently my two main ongoing fics are both set in Heaven's Feel. Considering I have such a love/hate relationship with it.
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
I find it rather ironic that currently my two main ongoing fics are both set in Heaven's Feel. Considering I have such a love/hate relationship with it.
Well, that could be your way of saying, "There are a lot of things about this route I would like to change."
Well, that could be your way of saying, "There are a lot of things about this route I would like to change."
Well, that's likely true. I mean, if you're going to write AU fics, then why would you write one changing something that you like. The same applies to me, in general. I wouldn't write a AU fic in the middle of HF, I would write one that involved saving Sakura in other routes.
Well, that could be your way of saying, "There are a lot of things about this route I would like to change."
True enough. Though I do admit I have one AU idea for Fate, but it doesn't seem as fun to develop. Besides, in terms of AU material, HF has a lot of things to work with depending on what you change.
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
In all honesty? My current project is closest to HF too, though I'm throwing things pretty far off the rails. It's just... well, as much as I have my problems with certain aspects of the storyline, HF does have the widest selection of villains to work with, which makes things easier for me. Yes, it means I'll have to work with that little prick True Assassin, but maybe writing scenes from his perspective will enable me to make him at least seem respectable by showing his thought processes, rather than showing him from the outside as a big skull-masked punching bag.
There had been a time when the Golden King walked through the foyer, resplendent in his pride. His skin had been darker and his eyes brighter. He had walked to the trophies wall-mounted and run his fingers along the polished bronze. He never dwelt on his reflection.
Once, he had thrown open the doors of his vault and stood in awe before legends greater than his own, stories even the commoners knew from Phoenicia to the Valley of Indus. He would close his eyes and listen to the song of perfect blades cutting the desert wind that snuck inside about his feet.
Yet beyond this refuge lay all the evils of the world, and in their face he felt no horror, no despair, no compassion. He traveled the world and saw no one worth loving, so he sealed away his heart in that vault, encircled by uncaring blades that no longer sang to him.
Of all his infinite treasures, there is one within the Gate of Babylon he will never call.
Spoiler for Another Story:
The Making Of
Bodies and flame. As far as the eye can see and as far as the mind can recall, there were bodies and flame. With a bitter smile, he turned his back on the sight and trudged off, his heart aching far worse than his war-forged body.
War, he thinks to himself. Did I really call it that, back then? He is abashed at the thought of his naivete. Those two weeks spent fighting, with all its fresh terror...to call it a war was a mockery. Two weeks fighting enemies he could at least name and count defeated. Two weeks with her. It was merely a hard-won love story at worst.
At best, it was-- but he stops himself. The best did not happen. The vision of her smiling, saying her final words to him fades as she had, and the brown and gray and dancing red shadows invade his eyes again. He wondered if his mere existence invited all of this to chase him.
Suddenly, he pauses, a presentiment washing over him. Weapons tear at his flesh, stripping it away until you can see the bone enough for the epitaphs they will carve into them when he falls. The tears he fights back are not for his own sake, but for hers. They have all gone before him. When he dies, who will be left to remember them? Who will see his thousand blades and know that they are gravestones?
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
All right, here's the beginnings of a fic I've been working on for awhile; I believe we briefly discussed the idea in the Game thread awhile back and I'm only now getting around to writing it having thought of enough plot to actually make it work. In any event, I have the prologue and the first two chapters written out, with the third on the way, so I figured now was as good a time as any to start with the posting.
Just a warning: there will, of course, be game spoilers. Mostly for HF, but some details from other routes might get let out as well.
Spoiler for Chaos Theory, Prologue:
You would be shocked how little difference there actually is between most alternate universes.
Oh, granted, there's always going to be the odd one out. Well… actually, there are an infinite number of odd ones out. You see, the nature of the multiverse is that it's not actually 'multi' so much as 'omni'. Everything that could have possibly happened has happened, and more than that, it has happened an infinite number of times across an infinite number of universes. Therefore it is impossible for any universe to truly be odd, because any given universe is nothing more or less than the sum total of an infinite number of things happening or not happening in combination, and there will be another universe where the exact opposite things happened, and between them will be universes with all of those (again, infinite) things happening in wildly different or nearly identical combinations. And each of those will have an opposite too. And then there are the ones where nothing happened, ever, and the worlds where things have stopped happening. And there are an infinite number of those as well, many of them with subtly different definitions of 'nothing' happening, and sometime the nothing from one leaks into another and becomes something there because that universe has different rules of nothing, so what doesn't exist in one universe not only exists in another, it always has existed and always will exist, while in yet another universe it will never haven't not existed.
And just think: if you were one of my apprentices, I'd be quizzing you on this later. And people wonder why they traditionally don't last long.
In any event, my point was, there are many, many alternate worlds. And many of them are strange indeed. I've seen worlds where life on Earth took vastly different paths; a landscape made up of monumental crystalline mountains constantly wreathed in emerald lightning, populated by formless energy creatures that fed on magnetic charges. I've seen worlds where humanity evolved more quickly; a race of psychics and superhumans who make our greatest achievements look as transient and meaningless as children's sandcastles... and who tear their world apart in wars the scale of which we cannot even imagine. Worlds where man never evolved at all, leaving Gaia wild, cruel, and untamed… but far more beautiful and vibrant, in her own harsh way.
I once saw a world of nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly.
But a surprising number of worlds are nothing like that at all. They're just… exactly what you know. One little difference, maybe two. One person's life is changed, and that's a whole different world. Even though only a select few people are affected, it's still a world all its own.
And sometimes, that rarest of rarities… sometimes, that one little change is just the first few rocks that signal an avalanche, and by the end, the world that used to be so much like your own isn't even recognizable. They say that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, if it hits the air currents just right. They're not wrong. Sometimes, it doesn't even take that much.
And sometimes not.
And sometimes both. Or neither. Or all of the above, repeating infinitely in a cascade of possible and impossible actions and reactions across all of time and space.
Isn't magic fun?
-An Excerpt From the Memoirs of Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. If you found parts of it confusing, that's probably for the best.
***
Events were unfolding. Just as they always had, just as they would on a thousand, thousand other worlds exactly like this one.
The false priest wiped the last flecks of dried blood from his knife in satisfaction. He had derived, he admitted, a not-inconsiderable amount of amusement from what he'd done to the Irishwoman; befriended her, earned her trust, led her in her career and built her to her greatest moment of personal triumph… and taken it all from her with a single thrust of a blade. Along with her arm, shortly afterward and with the aid of a decent bone saw. The shock and despair in her eyes had been nothing short of intoxicating.
He'd left her just barely alive. Intentionally. It was more amusing to think of her slowly wasting away in the abandoned building he'd deposited her in, far from help, agonizing over everything he'd taken from her as she died. Her life had been passionate and driven, her death should be no less intense. It was the greatest gift she could be given, and the greatest curse. He appreciated the duality of it all.
And of course, the personal amusement afforded by this action was only the tip of the iceberg. One person really wasn't enough to be more than an appetizer, but an interesting game was about to begin, and to truly exercise his interests and enjoy it to the fullest possible extent, he needed pieces on the chessboard. Now, with the harvesting of Bazett Fraga McRemitz's arm and by extension her contract and Command Seals, Kirei Kotomine had acquired a very excellent game piece indeed. The Masters were gathering, and he had unprecedented freedom to observe and manipulate to ensure the war went to his liking. Honestly, the situation was just about perfect.
In the shadows of the Church, Servant Lancer waited impatiently. He wasn't terribly happy with his new Master… the last had been a cute, spirited girl with much more likable personality, and he would have enjoyed this War quite a bit with her by his side. Just his bad luck that she was a crappy judge of character to balance out her good qualities. But he was willing, for the moment, to tolerate the annoying fake priest if it led to getting a chance to actually taste some of this legendary combat he kept hearing about.
Oh, man, that priest had better hook him up with some decent fights, or he would be so pissed.
***
Far beneath them both, the Golden King stretched and yawned. As so often happened these days, he was rather bored.
He wasn't terribly interested in the War, frankly… there was some value to be had from the prize, he supposed, but it wasn't as though it would be difficult to take it any time he wanted. Most likely he would simply let it all play out unless he saw something interesting to do in the meantime. Some of the other Servants might be fun, if he got too bored… not enough to actually be a threat, of course, but potentially one might emerge that would force him to exert some effort. The Lancer that Kotomine had stolen was nothing worth noticing, but maybe the others would be higher quality… another scion of the gods, perhaps, like that insane Conqueror King from the last war. Now he had been interesting! Not many men were worth fighting, but that one had been something else. But beyond the slim hope that another like him would emerge, there wasn't much else to look forward to.
He supposed that one girl, the one with the strange body and the broken eyes, could be a diversion. She was a nasty, hungry abomination, and one he'd marked as a most likely requiring extermination at some point in the future. In a rare moment of kindness, he'd told her to commit suicide; it was a practical solution, and if she really was what he thought she was, she'd probably be happier just skipping onto reincarnation early instead of completing her impending transformation. He considered hunting her down right now, just to see if she'd listened or not, and killing her with his own two hands if she'd had the temerity to assume that she had any right to ignore even his most vague of whims. But to be honest, he didn't really think it was worth the energy. And giving her power some time to mature and twist itself further would likely make it vaguely more interesting if he had to destroy her later.
… … … oh, who was he fooling? All of this was nothing but killing time until she appeared.
The silver knight who'd caught his eye like few other women could. She would appear again, he could feel it in his blood. She sought the Grail with a passion he found utterly irresistible, and if the Grail appeared, that woman would defy every law of reality, time, and space in her attempts to seize it. She would come to the Holy Grail, she would come to him, and he would be waiting for her, to complete what he'd started all those years ago. To finally break that indomitable will, to burn that passion out of her and make her his own, like she was always destined to be.
Yes, yes, that was something to hope for. That woman would be his greatest treasure yet, the crown jewel of his unmatched collection.
The last ten years of tedium would be entirely worth it for that single, perfect moment when the defiance finally left those beautiful eyes.
***
The Witch resisted the urge to throw her head back and laugh out loud. The raw power flooding through her was delicious, a rush like no other, and the sensations were definitely going to her head. More came in with each second, drawn from the hapless sacrifices who dwelt in the shadow of her mountain temple. More energy than a dozen Servants could ever need, enough to power her spells for a lifetime. She'd need all of it and more to deal with the foes she had to face, of course, but the fact that the power she had already amassed was not sufficient did not make it any less exhilarating to possess.
This land, at the heart of the sacred mountain, was perfect for her purposes. Only one way in or out, easily defended by the talented guard dog she had conjured. A spiritually rich land that could easily hold her territory as a Magus. The focal point of a leyline that allowed her to touch the entire city without ever leaving her room, an effectively limitless source of power. The war had not yet even begun, and with a single stroke she had claimed a great advantage by positioning her Temple in this holy land that could essentially be called the ideal base of operations.
Yes, Servant Caster thought, this Holy Grail War wasn't such a big problem, if you just took the time to think it through. And when the Holy Grail was hers…
She cast a glance at Kuzuki Souichirou, her latest Master and lover, sitting cross-legged in the corner of her chambers, his expression unreadable. She would take her time seizing the Grail, and savor her time with him. And when it was finally hers, well… she knew better than to make childish wishes. But if it was possible that this prize could truly grant her a second life… if there was even a chance, to finally have that happiness she had been so thoroughly denied during her life...
For a thing of infinite power that could grant any wish at all, surely a second lifetime to spend with this man was simple enough to give?
***
The magus smiled at the fruits of her labor. The chosen hour was rapidly approaching, when she would draw her card and follow in her father's esteemed footsteps. All the rituals were prepared to textbook precision, her power was at its peak, and she was deservedly confident in her abilities. Really, it could be said to be that most elusive of creatures, a Perfect Situation.
This would be her time to shine, she knew. When the final spells were cast, the ultimate swordsman would be in front of her, her shining key to victory. In one fell swoop, she would not only follow her father's path, but travel further along it than he ever had. The Tohsaka family would be the ones to finally claim the Holy Grail, and it would all begin with her flawless summoning of Servant Saber.
Poor thing. It really was a shame about that pendant, wasn't it?
***
You could hardly call it a person anymore.
A person didn't wither in the sunlight. A person didn't hide from the world in basement crypts like some kind of phantom haunting his own home. A person didn't decay as he walked, his body made up of stolen flesh held together around a decrepit soul by the action of worms that smelled of old blood and rotten meat.
But mostly, a 'person' was capable of holding some, meaningful connection to another. And it had been many years since Zouken Matou had done anything of the sort.
He had eyes, literal and figurative, throughout the city of Fuyuki. A poor match for his magic it might be, but he had dwelt in this land for many years and his power was not to be trifled with here, in the heart of his territory. He saw everything.
The Witch at Ryudou Temple was already at work gathering souls, and she had summoned a Servant of her own.
The false priest acting as Overseer had two Servants of his own to work with, and to make matters worse, he had nothing but contempt for Zouken, personally.
The Grail prepared by the Einzbern family was even more chaotic than usual this time around, and the Servant they had assigned to protect it was one of the top contenders in the War. Getting to it would be difficult.
In all honesty, he seriously considered just waiting for the next War. This one had come much more quickly than expected, and perhaps the next would follow suit. Each passing year made it harder to focus, but if he passed into hibernation for most of it, lasting out the years should be quite possible. Really, the situation was about as horrible as it could be for his plans.
But…
That thing was just about perfect. The personality had some flaws to work out, but in terms of function he couldn't have asked for better.
He'd had it call up a Servant and gave control over to Shinji; he didn't expect much from the boy, but risking the material in direct combat as a Master would be a waste and Zouken hadn't yet conceived of a way to properly utilize it. But things were changing, weren't they? Subtle changes over the last few years, more pronounced over the last few days... something had changed in its existence outside the manor.
Something was giving it just a tiny hint of hope.
Zouken smiled, something black and chitinous crawling out from between his teeth before burrowing back into the wrinkled flesh of his neck. Hope was weakness he could exploit. He would begin paying more attention to the thing, observe its interactions outside his home, and determine what had happened to bring about this unforeseen change in the previously unchangeable core of the thing. A few days of observation and then, once a weakness had been determined, perhaps it could finally be made pliable and be put to real use. And if that happened, well... it might be time to get more directly involved in this Holy Grail War.
Elsewhere in the darkened manor, the 'material' sat in her room. Well, 'room' was not the best word for it. 'Cell' would have been more accurate. 'Pit' would have been even closer. This was not where she slept, after all, but where she came for training.
'Training', what a joke. 'Training' was an even worse word for what went on in this place than 'room' was to describe this dank, light-less Hell...
Worms and insects swarmed over, around, and through her prone body as she lay on the cold stone floor, staring at the ceiling in silence.
And why shouldn't she be silent? This was hardly a new experience for her. It had been years since something like this was enough to provoke a real reaction.
It had been years since anything was enough to make her cry.
***
Think of the people above, if you will. Consider the power gathered among them, the skill and intelligence. Enough to do some real good in this world, don't you think? A real shame it was all focused inexorably on killing one another, but that's how such things often turn out.
But more than that, think of the plans. Such big plans, every one of them. And so confident! The word 'perfect' seemed to come up a lot.
The thing about perfection, real perfection, is that it sort of speaks for itself. A truly immaculate situation would not need to be pointed out; it would be obviously perfect to anyone looking at it. The architect of a truly perfect plan would not need to reassure themselves as to its perfection, because it would be clear immediately that it could not possibly go wrong.
The main point of this lecture, really, is that one would think a group of such powerful, intelligent people would really know how to avoid making themselves look so stupid. Because every single one of those utterly perfect plans was going to fail. Some miserably, some slightly, but not one of them would be moving completely according to the planner's designs.
Because of some 'Perfect Materials' that had a little more free will than Zouken Matou expected.
Because of a ten-going-on-twenty chaotic little white-haired girl who decided she really didn't care all that much about the glory of the Einzbern family.
Why, it wouldn't be a terrible stretch to say that a few of the above would be royally screwing over each other, as well.
But mostly? The assorted plans at play here would be going very, very wrong due to the actions of a no-name, no-count, utterly talentless Magus by the name of Shirou Emiya. He had no magic worth mentioning, no combat experience of note, and no plan for or knowledge of the War he was about to enter. He did, however, have one trait that had derailed a countless number of such grand, far-reaching schemes throughout history.
You see, he really, really wanted to be a hero.
Spoiler for Author's Note:
Well, no going back now! A pretty typical prologue, mostly just setting-building, but it's a start. I can tell right now that this story is going to tax how amoral I can be; I don't think I've ever written a fic for a universe where the villains are as completely horrible as FSN.
Let me know if you spot any glaring errors so I can get them fixed before I post this on Fanfiction.net. Like I said, the next two chapters are already done, but I'll probably be keeping at least a couple days between each posting to give a chance for corrections to be spotted and made.
I'm sure this is already obvious, but the title is a reference to the mathematical concept where small differences in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes in otherwise similar systems. A major theme of the story is a few, tiny differences early on throwing things completely off the rails
Oh, and thanks early on to RadiantBeam, who helped me hammer out a few key plot points that will be coming up later on and who will most likely be helping me hammer out more of 'em. Sadly, that means she is spoiled to them, but that's okay. She's my sounding board, so sometimes she'll be spoiled to things. Just look at it as getting an exclusive sneak-peek, RB!
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
Hee, sorry for the double post, but it occurs to me that nothing actually happens in the prologue and it really sort of reads more as an excuse for me to practice writing the characters .
So, just because I like you guys...
Spoiler for Chaos Theory, Chapter One:
Chapter One: Moonlight
Illyasviel von Einzbern walked through the unfamiliar streets without a hint of fear.
She had no reason to fear anything or anyone, for the Black Giant walked beside her. Unseen, perhaps, but there nonetheless, an implacable power waiting only to be unleashed upon the target of her choice. So long as he was by her side, she could not be harmed. And that meant she could not be harmed ever, because he would never leave her side, never refuse her anything within his power to give. Her Berserker would always be there for her, and only for her.
Unlike so many others, he would never disappoint her.
The Princess had a mission here. She was to claim the Holy Grail. It was hers, grandpapa had said. It was all of theirs, their great family's treasure by right. Illyasviel would take the destroyer they had summoned to the Holy Land, and she would claim the prize their family had sought for so long. For the glory of Einzbern, she would triumph.
Silly. As if she cared about the glory of Einzbern when she finally had so much freedom! Finally, she was out of the castle, finally she was out in the world; and not the frozen forests in the German countryside, full of wolves and worse, a shining, vibrant city unlike anywhere she'd ever seen. There were so many things to see and do, and despite Sella and Leysritt's whining that she should stay in the Castle when not hunting the other Masters, she planned to see and do as many of them as she could over the course of this War. And one boy to kill, of course, but in all honesty that was going to be so simple that there wasn't much reason to be worried about it. She was looking forward to it, of course… to meeting the boy that Kiritsugu had abandoned her for. Finding out what he was like. And then killing him, horribly. Not right away, no... she had ten years of frustration, confusion, and bitterness to take out on him first. She couldn't pay Kiritsugu back for throwing her away like trash, not anymore, but she could take it out on the boy he'd used to replace her. Repeatedly, for several weeks. With power tools.
Hmm, speaking of the Boy... you know, she'd never even seen him in person? Just pictures one of grandpapa's agents had acquired as part of his efforts to motivate Ilya for the coming war. She actually knew almost nothing about him.
He hadn't summoned a Servant yet, she was certain of that. She had no doubt he would be the seventh Master; the world simply wouldn't be fun if he wasn't. But the last card had not yet been drawn, and so she didn't want to kill him. It would be far, far more entertaining to kill him when it became part of the War-game. Then she could take her revenge and play at the same time! And of course, she was a noble girl. It was only proper of her to let the boy arm himself before she destroyed him, wasn't it? She must take care to look after the peasants, after all. Yes, there was definitely something to be said for letting him have a fighting chance.
She considered Berserker.
Well, all right, he wouldn't have a real fighting chance, but at least the appearance of one. He'd be able to struggle a bit before the end, and that was really the best he could hope for.
Still, just because she wasn't going to kill him yet didn't mean she couldn't play a bit. Put a touch of fear into him, let him know she was on the hunt. He lived around here, didn't he? She had just been wandering aimlessly, taking in the sights for the first time, but perhaps her subconscious had led her to the neighborhood she'd tracked Kiritsugu's former home to. The boy lived around here; she could at least go take a look, see Kiritsugu's son with her own two eyes. Yes, see him but not hurt him... just hold back, and let her hunger for the moment of his punishment build and build to a crescendo. The anticipation would make it taste sweeter when the time finally came.
Skipping cheerfully along, the little princess went off to find her prey.
Shirou Emiya had a lot on his mind, as he walked home from work that night.
Okay, actually, not a lot. Mostly Sakura, honestly, the underclassman who had inserted herself so seamlessly into his life over the last few years that he didn't even have to try anymore to think of her as family. But despite being only one thing, she was a big enough thing to take up most of his mind.
It started with a simple thought… there had been some serious crimes in Miyama City, lately. Was it safe to let her walk home by herself at night anymore?
But that led to thoughts of walking her home, which led to thoughts of her in general, which led to the reminder that he just… honestly wasn't sure about anything concerning that girl anymore. For starters, even he had started to notice that something was wrong. She just seemed… a little bit off in everything she did recently. Not much; so little he probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't known her for so long. But it was still enough that he was beginning to worry about her. Well, more than he usually worried about everyone, anyway.
And in more general terms, she was really starting to get pretty, which made him kind of nervous...
He shook his head to dislodge that thought. Sakura was Sakura. It wouldn't do to let his hormones ruin one of the handful of genuine friendships he actually had. She was family, and you don't do that to…
… Family.
The moonlight reflected of the odd white hair of the girl as she walked past him, creating a soft, otherworldly glow around her.
The world froze.
He wasn't sure why. He knew he'd never seen her before. There was no real reason to notice her, other than her albino features, and that really didn't explain why he was staring so much. There was just a strange pressure about the girl that drew his attention, like he was looking at a fairy or some other creature that wasn't really part of his world...
She didn't look at him, but he could still see the smile on her tiny face in the moonlight. "You'll die if you don't summon it soon, onii-chan," she said with a giggle, her tone not making it clear if she was talking to him or just speaking to the night air.
Shirou stopped, and watched the girl stroll past. She… something about her just said 'do not follow me' to his mind. Like he was risking his life by approaching her. But…
Sometimes, it's the tiniest little things that can change the world.
Shirou sprinted after the departing girl, shouting, "Wait, wait up a second!"
The girl, her eyes wide with more shock than should probably have been in them, turned to face him. "Um... huh?" She said, eloquently.
Shirou knelt down so that he could look her in the eyes, and put on his warmest smile. Her clothes looked very well made, so best to assume she had money and behave with proper respect; though really, he would have anyway. Even if she wasn't actually upper-class, it was the rare little girl who wouldn't get a small thrill out of being talked to like she was a Lady. "Hello, ojou-chan. Are you all alone?"
Ilya blinked a few times in surprised confusion. "Er… hello?" This is all wrong. What was he doing? She hadn't been planning to talk to him now. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be smiling. She hadn't even bothered to hide her intent to kill! This had been a warning, a declaration of war, so why was he acting like he was happy to meet her? Had… wait, had Kiritsugu never told him about her? He didn't… he didn't think she was a threat because he didn't recognize her? He didn't even have the good grace to know what he'd taken from her? Her anger rising, she considered ordering Berserker to materialize and smash the boy to paste, right here and now.
Anger which dissolved rapidly as her train of thought stopped dead with just one single motion from the boy. He reached his hand out and patted her on the head. The simple display of affection left Ilya openly stunned. He was not supposed to be nice to her. Most people in her (very limited) experience were not, and she'd had every reason to believe he would be far worse than the others.
This really, really wasn't going how she'd planned.
Shirou, oblivious, just kept smiling. "Wow, what pretty hair! And those clothes are so nice... you really look like a princess, you know that?"
He thinks I'm pretty... he likes the hair I got from mama... Ilya thought, the little girl in her rising to the top in irrational glee at the praise to overpower the cynical teen woman trying her hardest to distrust him. She liked people who were nice to her. She wasn't supposed to like him, but he was being nice and... ugh, this was all wrong! She tried to find her anger again, contemplated ordering Berserker to kill just to make herself less confused...
"But you know, there's been a lot of dangerous people and accidents around at night, lately. It's not safe for a cute little girl to be walking alone at this hour. Would you like me to walk you home?" the boy asked.
Wait, what? Ilya thought, her anger totally derailed once again. Why was he being so consistently nice? He wasn't supposed to be nice to her. He was supposed to be cold, and uncaring, and ruthless. But… well… even disregarding the fact that she was not, in fact, alone, and was probably the safest person in this city, he was still showing concern. He was being nicer to her than most of her own family, and they'd only just met! This wasn't fair!
Time to get things back on track. Don't forget who he really is. "I…" she began, preparing to challenge this, punch the holes needed to see through the deception.
"Oh… hehehe…" The boy said, laughing in a somewhat embarrassed manner. "I guess that I'm a stranger to you, aren't I? I got so caught up in the moment I forgot that for all you know, I'm the dangerous one. Still, I'd feel bad about leaving you all alone here, so how's this?" He reached into his pockets, and fished out some coins and a few slips of paper. "Here's a little money… there's a gas station straight down the block, this way. There's enough here to use the payphone to call someone to pick you up and buy yourself a little snack while you wait. Would you like me to walk you at least that far? I'd prefer to make sure you're safe, but I'll leave if you want me to."
Dammit.
What is he… how should I... Why does he keep smiling? Ilya thought in desperation and annoyance, her mind overturned for the tenth time in half that many minutes. Stop it! Stop being nice! I… I'm going to kill you, so if you don't stop it will be…!
Shirou Emiya stood up, and offered his hand to Ilyasviel von Einzbern. "Well…?" He said
And, with a slight blush and against her own better judgment, Ilya placed her small hand in his and said, "Y-you can escort me to this place you mentioned. I'll trust you... just this once."
Shirou's smile widened, making that 'slight blush' grow a little bit deeper. "I would be honored," He said warmly.
And though neither of them knew it at the time, they had just ensured that the plans of basically every single person in the conflict to come were going to go completely wrong. Except Rin. Her plans went wrong just fine without any outside help.
She hadn't gotten Saber, so things were not as perfect as she'd planned. But still, she had a lot to be proud of; there were only seven cards, and she'd drawn one. Rin Tohsaka was a true Master.
Granted, the card she'd drawn was apparently the jerk card, because the urge to beat the smug out of her new Servant had arisen more than once. Still, Archer was her Servant, and that's what counted.
But now this had happened to ruin her already pretty fragile good mood. It had to be one of the other Masters; only a Servant could have started something like this without her noticing. And it had to be someone who knew her, else they wouldn't have chosen her school, out of every public location in Fuyuki, as a target for one of the most vile magics she'd ever seen. It was a boundary field, and a thoroughly nasty one; a twisted, consuming spell field that would digest everyone caught inside it, melt them down into blood and spirit to be consumed like they were food instead of people, instead of her friends and classmates. Someone… some pestilential little insect had dared to place a disgusting thing like this at her school, her territory.
She was not amused, and she would make sure that the perpetrator knew this. She'd make sure he knew it slowly and horribly. It was possible that a variety of bladed instruments would come into play for this instruction.
She prepared to draw the power from the sigil she'd found; it was ultimately futile, but it should by some time in preventing the boundary field from activating. Not much, but every second helped if It gave her a shot at finding her Mystery Master and driving a knife into his spine before the field could activate. She laid her palm on the place where the magic felt thickest…
"What, you're going to erase it? What a waste," Said a voice even more cheerfully insolent than Archer's.
The blue knight standing on the water tower spoke to her for a short while, like they were old friends.
And then he tried to kill her, and things got a bit hectic. Still, it was probably for the best; she'd been hoping to get a picture of Archer's combat utility. And her new Servant did not disappoint. She didn't understand how... she couldn't properly comprehend melee combat between two such superhuman creatures, but Archer was able to match Lancer blow-for-blow, despite his class. Surely an Archer should have fought from a distance, with missile weapons, but her Servant had drawn twin swords, unlike those in any legend she had ever heard of. And he had faced the spearman alone, and he had not been defeated.
Perhaps her card draw had been better than she'd thought.
The red knight and the blue knight clashed, again and again. Lancer was clearly the stronger and faster, yet no matter how furiously he attacked, Archer batted aside the lightning-fast thrusts. His weapons, the white sword that reflected the moon and the black sword that devoured it, were shattered many times and yet always intact...
Rin Tohsaka stood transfixed by this, her first battle in the Holy Grail War. Magus or no, she had not seen so many amazing things that she could be anything other than stunned by the prospect of two Epic Spirits, genuine heroes, dueling before her very eyes.
And so she didn't notice the boy watching from the shadows until long after she should have...
The boy was hurled into the shed with bruising force.
He had already died once this night, pierced through the heart by that blood-red lance. He did not wish to die again, especially not in the exact same way. But it was beginning to seriously look like the choice was going to be taken out of his hands.
He didn't want to die.
He didn't want to die.
He hadn't saved anyone, not one single person, and he didn't want to die yet…!
The blue spearman made the fatal thrust.
Light and wind filled the small shed, and the lance was repelled in a crashing of metal against metal. With a curse, the spearman leapt backwards out of the shed.
The boy looked up at her. The impossibly beautiful silver knight, who stood framed in the light of the moon shining in through the open door…
"I ask of you," Servant Saber said, "Are you my Master?"
Sometimes, a tiny little event can change the world.
But some destinies are just meant to be, no matter what changes around them.
The Seven cards have been dealt, and the Masters are gathered. Let's draw the blade of fate, and swing it down one more time.
Welcome to the Holy Grail War.
Spoiler for Author's Note:
There, the first of those 'little changes' that will end up having serious consequences when all is said and done. When I was thinking of things to change, this just stuck out: it always hit me as odd that 'Mr. Hero' was willing to let a little girl walk around alone at night when there were reports of murders and gas leaks all over the news, no matter how weird she seemed. And given that Ilya is more-or-less a blank slate who can have her entire character radically altered by even tiny stimuli...
As before, let me know if you spot any glaring mistakes that need corrected, and see ya in Chapter Two!
Last edited by Moczo; 2010-10-03 at 17:15.
Reason: It's Kiritsugu, not Kuritsugu...
Hee, sorry for the double post, but it occurs to me that nothing actually happens in the prologue and it really sort of reads more as an excuse for me to practice writing the characters .
So, just because I like you guys...
Spoiler for Chaos Theory, Chapter One:
Chapter One: Moonlight
Illyasviel von Einzbern walked through the unfamiliar streets without a hint of fear.
She had no reason to fear anything or anyone, for the Black Giant walked beside her. Unseen, perhaps, but there nonetheless, an implacable power waiting only to be unleashed upon the target of her choice. So long as he was by her side, she could not be harmed. And that meant she could not be harmed ever, because he would never leave her side, never refuse her anything within his power to give. Her Berserker would always be there for her, and only for her.
Unlike so many others, he would never disappoint her.
The Princess had a mission here. She was to claim the Holy Grail. It was hers, grandpapa had said. It was all of theirs, their great family's treasure by right. Illyasviel would take the destroyer they had summoned to the Holy Land, and she would claim the prize their family had sought for so long. For the glory of Einzbern, she would triumph.
Silly. As if she cared about the glory of Einzbern when she finally had so much freedom! Finally, she was out of the castle, finally she was out in the world; and not the frozen forests in the German countryside, full of wolves and worse, a shining, vibrant city unlike anywhere she'd ever seen. There were so many things to see and do, and despite Sella and Leysritt's whining that she should stay in the Castle when not hunting the other Masters, she planned to see and do as many of them as she could over the course of this War. And one boy to kill, of course, but in all honesty that was going to be so simple that there wasn't much reason to be worried about it. She was looking forward to it, of course… to meeting the boy that Kiritsugu had abandoned her for. Finding out what he was like. And then killing him, horribly. Not right away, no... she had ten years of frustration, confusion, and bitterness to take out on him first. She couldn't pay Kiritsugu back for throwing her away like trash, not anymore, but she could take it out on the boy he'd used to replace her. Repeatedly, for several weeks. With power tools.
Hmm, speaking of the Boy... you know, she'd never even seen him in person? Just pictures one of grandpapa's agents had acquired as part of his efforts to motivate Ilya for the coming war. She actually knew almost nothing about him.
He hadn't summoned a Servant yet, she was certain of that. She had no doubt he would be the seventh Master; the world simply wouldn't be fun if he wasn't. But the last card had not yet been drawn, and so she didn't want to kill him. It would be far, far more entertaining to kill him when it became part of the War-game. Then she could take her revenge and play at the same time! And of course, she was a noble girl. It was only proper of her to let the boy arm himself before she destroyed him, wasn't it? She must take care to look after the peasants, after all. Yes, there was definitely something to be said for letting him have a fighting chance.
She considered Berserker.
Well, all right, he wouldn't have a real fighting chance, but at least the appearance of one. He'd be able to struggle a bit before the end, and that was really the best he could hope for.
Still, just because she wasn't going to kill him yet didn't mean she couldn't play a bit. Put a touch of fear into him, let him know she was on the hunt. He lived around here, didn't he? She had just been wandering aimlessly, taking in the sights for the first time, but perhaps her subconscious had led her to the neighborhood she'd tracked Kiritsugu's former home to. The boy lived around here; she could at least go take a look, see Kiritsugu's son with her own two eyes. Yes, see him but not hurt him... just hold back, and let her hunger for the moment of his punishment build and build to a crescendo. The anticipation would make it taste sweeter when the time finally came.
Skipping cheerfully along, the little princess went off to find her prey.
Shirou Emiya had a lot on his mind, as he walked home from work that night.
Okay, actually, not a lot. Mostly Sakura, honestly, the underclassman who had inserted herself so seamlessly into his life over the last few years that he didn't even have to try anymore to think of her as family. But despite being only one thing, she was a big enough thing to take up most of his mind.
It started with a simple thought… there had been some serious crimes in Miyama City, lately. Was it safe to let her walk home by herself at night anymore?
But that led to thoughts of walking her home, which led to thoughts of her in general, which led to the reminder that he just… honestly wasn't sure about anything concerning that girl anymore. For starters, even he had started to notice that something was wrong. She just seemed… a little bit off in everything she did recently. Not much; so little he probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't known her for so long. But it was still enough that he was beginning to worry about her. Well, more than he usually worried about everyone, anyway.
And in more general terms, she was really starting to get pretty, which made him kind of nervous...
He shook his head to dislodge that thought. Sakura was Sakura. It wouldn't do to let his hormones ruin one of the handful of genuine friendships he actually had. She was family, and you don't do that to…
… Family.
The moonlight reflected of the odd white hair of the girl as she walked past him, creating a soft, otherworldly glow around her.
The world froze.
He wasn't sure why. He knew he'd never seen her before. There was no real reason to notice her, other than her albino features, and that really didn't explain why he was staring so much. There was just a strange pressure about the girl that drew his attention, like he was looking at a fairy or some other creature that wasn't really part of his world...
She didn't look at him, but he could still see the smile on her tiny face in the moonlight. "You'll die if you don't summon it soon, onii-chan," she said with a giggle, her tone not making it clear if she was talking to him or just speaking to the night air.
Shirou stopped, and watched the girl stroll past. She… something about her just said 'do not follow me' to his mind. Like he was risking his life by approaching her. But…
Sometimes, it's the tiniest little things that can change the world.
Shirou sprinted after the departing girl, shouting, "Wait, wait up a second!"
The girl, her eyes wide with more shock than should probably have been in them, turned to face him. "Um... huh?" She said, eloquently.
Shirou knelt down so that he could look her in the eyes, and put on his warmest smile. Her clothes looked very well made, so best to assume she had money and behave with proper respect; though really, he would have anyway. Even if she wasn't actually upper-class, it was the rare little girl who wouldn't get a small thrill out of being talked to like she was a Lady. "Hello, ojou-chan. Are you all alone?"
Ilya blinked a few times in surprised confusion. "Er… hello?" This is all wrong. What was he doing? She hadn't been planning to talk to him now. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be smiling. She hadn't even bothered to hide her intent to kill! This had been a warning, a declaration of war, so why was he acting like he was happy to meet her? Had… wait, had Kiritsugu never told him about her? He didn't… he didn't think she was a threat because he didn't recognize her? He didn't even have the good grace to know what he'd taken from her? Her anger rising, she considered ordering Berserker to materialize and smash the boy to paste, right here and now.
Anger which dissolved rapidly as her train of thought stopped dead with just one single motion from the boy. He reached his hand out and patted her on the head. The simple display of affection left Ilya openly stunned. He was not supposed to be nice to her. Most people in her (very limited) experience were not, and she'd had every reason to believe he would be far worse than the others.
This really, really wasn't going how she'd planned.
Shirou, oblivious, just kept smiling. "Wow, what pretty hair! And those clothes are so nice... you really look like a princess, you know that?"
He thinks I'm pretty... he likes the hair I got from mama... Ilya thought, the little girl in her rising to the top in irrational glee at the praise to overpower the cynical teen woman trying her hardest to distrust him. She liked people who were nice to her. She wasn't supposed to like him, but he was being nice and... ugh, this was all wrong! She tried to find her anger again, contemplated ordering Berserker to kill just to make herself less confused...
"But you know, there's been a lot of dangerous people and accidents around at night, lately. It's not safe for a cute little girl to be walking alone at this hour. Would you like me to walk you home?" the boy asked.
Wait, what? Ilya thought, her anger totally derailed once again. Why was he being so consistently nice? He wasn't supposed to be nice to her. He was supposed to be cold, and uncaring, and ruthless. But… well… even disregarding the fact that she was not, in fact, alone, and was probably the safest person in this city, he was still showing concern. He was being nicer to her than most of her own family, and they'd only just met! This wasn't fair!
Time to get things back on track. Don't forget who he really is. "I…" she began, preparing to challenge this, punch the holes needed to see through the deception.
"Oh… hehehe…" The boy said, laughing in a somewhat embarrassed manner. "I guess that I'm a stranger to you, aren't I? I got so caught up in the moment I forgot that for all you know, I'm the dangerous one. Still, I'd feel bad about leaving you all alone here, so how's this?" He reached into his pockets, and fished out some coins and a few slips of paper. "Here's a little money… there's a gas station straight down the block, this way. There's enough here to use the payphone to call someone to pick you up and buy yourself a little snack while you wait. Would you like me to walk you at least that far? I'd prefer to make sure you're safe, but I'll leave if you want me to."
Dammit.
What is he… how should I... Why does he keep smiling? Ilya thought in desperation and annoyance, her mind overturned for the tenth time in half that many minutes. Stop it! Stop being nice! I… I'm going to kill you, so if you don't stop it will be…!
Shirou Emiya stood up, and offered his hand to Ilyasviel von Einzbern. "Well…?" He said
And, with a slight blush and against her own better judgment, Ilya placed her small hand in his and said, "Y-you can escort me to this place you mentioned. I'll trust you... just this once."
Shirou's smile widened, making that 'slight blush' grow a little bit deeper. "I would be honored," He said warmly.
And though neither of them knew it at the time, they had just ensured that the plans of basically every single person in the conflict to come were going to go completely wrong. Except Rin. Her plans went wrong just fine without any outside help.
She hadn't gotten Saber, so things were not as perfect as she'd planned. But still, she had a lot to be proud of; there were only seven cards, and she'd drawn one. She was a true Master.
Granted, the card she'd drawn was apparently the jerk card, because the urge to beat the smug out of her new Servant had arisen more than once. Still, Archer was her Servant, and that's what counted.
But now this had happened to ruin her already pretty fragile good mood. It had to be one of the other Masters; only a Servant could have started something like this without her noticing. And it had to be someone who knew her, else they wouldn't have chosen her school, out of every public location in Fuyuki, as a target for one of the most vile magics she'd ever seen. It was a boundary field, and a thoroughly nasty one; a twisted, consuming spell field that would digest everyone caught inside it, melt them down into blood and spirit to be consumed like they were food instead of people, instead of her friends and classmates. Someone… some pestilential little insect had dared to place a disgusting thing like this at her school, her territory.
She was not amused, and she would make sure that the perpetrator knew this. She'd make sure he knew it slowly and horribly. It was possible that a variety of bladed instruments would come into play for this instruction.
She prepared to draw the power from the sigil she'd found; it was ultimately futile, but it should by some time in preventing the boundary field from activating. Not much, but every second helped if It gave her a shot at finding her Mystery Master and driving a knife into his spine before the field could activate. She laid her palm on the place where the magic felt thickest…
"What, you're going to erase it? What a waste," Said a voice even more cheerfully insolent than Archer's.
The blue knight standing on the water tower spoke to her for a short while, like they were old friends.
And then he tried to kill her, and things got a bit hectic. Still, it was probably for the best; she'd been hoping to get a picture of Archer's combat utility. And her new Servant did not disappoint. She didn't understand how... she couldn't properly comprehend melee combat between two such superhuman creatures, but Archer was able to match Lancer blow-for-blow, despite his class. Surely an Archer should have fought from a distance, with missile weapons, but her Servant had drawn twin swords, unlike those in any legend she had ever heard of. And he had faced the spearman alone, and he had not been defeated.
Perhaps her card draw had been better than she'd thought.
The red knight and the blue knight clashed, again and again. Lancer was clearly the stronger and faster, yet no matter how furiously he attacked, Archer batted aside the lightning-fast thrusts. His weapons, the white sword that reflected the moon and the black sword that devoured it, were shattered many times and yet always intact...
Rin Tohsaka stood transfixed by this, her first battle in the Holy Grail War. Magus or no, she had not seen so many amazing things that she could be anything other than stunned by the prospect of two Epic Spirits, genuine heroes, dueling before her very eyes.
And so she didn't notice the boy watching from the shadows until long after she should have...
The boy was hurled into the shed with bruising force.
He had already died once this night, pierced through the heart by that blood-red lance. He did not wish to die again, especially not in the exact same way. But it was beginning to seriously look like the choice was going to be taken out of his hands.
He didn't want to die.
He didn't want to die.
He hadn't saved anyone, not one single person, and he didn't want to die yet…!
The blue spearman made the fatal thrust.
Light and wind filled the small shed, and the lance was repelled in a crashing of metal against metal. With a curse, the spearman leapt backwards out of the shed.
The boy looked up at her. The impossibly beautiful silver knight, who stood framed in the light of the moon shining in through the open door…
"I ask of you," Servant Saber said, "Are you my Master?"
Sometimes, a tiny little event can change the world.
But some destinies are just meant to be, no matter what changes around them.
The Seven cards have been dealt, and the Masters are gathered. Let's draw the blade of fate, and swing it down one more time.
Welcome to the Holy Grail War.
Spoiler for Author's Note:
There, the first of those 'little changes' that will end up having serious consequences when all is said and done. When I was thinking of things to change, this just stuck out: it always hit me as odd that 'Mr. Hero' was willing to let a little girl walk around alone at night when there were reports of murders and gas leaks all over the news, no matter how weird she seemed. And given that Ilya is more-or-less a blank slate who can have her entire character radically altered by even tiny stimuli...
As before, let me know if you spot any glaring mistakes that need corrected, and see ya in Chapter Two!
Somehow, I get the feeling that throughout this fic, the girls will be desiring power tools and sharp, pointy, bladed objects very often. Especially Ilya and Rin. They kind of just give off that vibe, you know? That "I'mma cut you with power tools for two weeks" vibe that makes you both scared and intrigued.
Very "Awww" worthy moment when Shirou was kind to Ilya; very nice move to have her doubts planted in her head much earlier than originally. Like you said, it's a small change, but sometimes the smallest changes are the ones that have the biggest effects on the world.
I look forward to chapter 2! And continuing to be your sounding board.
"Except Rin. Her plans went wrong just fine without any outside help."
That seriously made me lol.
Oh btw, I think it's Kiritsugu. Not Kuritsugu.
So damn true it was a hilarious line. Probably due to the fact it is such a true statement .
Do like the small change in events. That interaction with Ilya really can change how events unfold. Even at this point trying to predict how the longer term events will change through that.
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
I know I said I'd wait a few days.
I got impatient.
Spoiler for Chaos Theory, Chapter 2:
Chapter Two: Ripples
Shirou Emiya was a confused, confused boy.
A day and a lifetime ago, he'd been wondering if he should be letting Sakura walk home alone (he had decided 'no', by the way, and he was glad of it. When he'd actually walked her home, he'd found that strange foreigners were hanging around her house lately, and then when he'd stopped by later to check in her grandfather had decided it was fun to creep him the hell out. Forget not walking home alone, he was considering not letting Sakura walk home at all. She could live in the guest house and stay far away from her stalkers and bizarre grandparents). Now?
He'd been stabbed through the heart by a large scary blue man with a spear. He had, somehow, survived this. How he had not died, he had no idea; all he knew for certain was that the scary man had decided to follow him home and kill him again to see if it stuck this time. He had argued the point… poorly, judging by the ease with which the superhuman individual had tossed him around his home like a ragdoll. He'd ended up kicked through the door of his workshop (or what would have been his workshop if he'd been a Magus worth mentioning), and had basically given up hope. He'd desperately prayed from something, anything… some way to survive, some way to insure his dream was not snuffed out before he even got the chance to start on it. And then, when he was at the lowest of low points with no way out and no shot at survival… that's when she'd made her appearance.
Impossibly beautiful. Shining in the moonlight, she'd called herself 'Saber'. She'd called him 'Master'. And she had saved his life, there was no denying that. She had faced the spearman and driven him off, when Shirou himself had been helpless to do anything but be batted around like a mouse in the paws of a lion. She was, like the knight in blue, a being of power; clearly more than human. More than that, though, while she was easily just as amazing as the superhuman spearman, unlike him she had a gentle beauty and dignity to match her obvious power. As annoyed as the young would-be-hero would have normally been by needing someone else to save him, Shirou was frankly too awed by her to care overmuch... even as she insisted on saying things he didn't understand and taking actions without listening to a word he said. She was simply amazing.
So he wished he'd had something other than an old raincoat to throw over her head so she wouldn't stand out.
It was Rin Tohsaka's fault, really. She and her own… Servant? They kept calling them 'Servants'… had been near his house, and Saber had, in another moment of 'not listening or explaining', attacked them.
Shirou had stopped her. Somehow, he wasn't quite sure… all he knew is that he desperately wanted her to stop, and when he'd shouted the command one of the strange new markings on his hand had vanished. He couldn't say why that happened (other than 'because it's magic'), he was just glad that it had. He couldn't be a very good hero if he let someone who called him Master walk around killing passerby without even explaining what the Hell was going on. Particularly when the passerby turned out to be the most popular girl at his school as well as... well, he didn't want to call her his crush, but...
In any case, Tohsaka had expressed gratitude at him preventing her from being skewered, and had entered his home. She fixed some windows, and expressed shock that he was too talentless to do the same. Nor was that the only thing he was mocked for during the course of their conversation.
He was beginning to get the impression that the fact she was a great Magus who wandered around at night in the presence of a superhuman killing machine was not the only thing about Tohsaka that she didn't share with the people at school. The sheer wickedness was also new.
Still, she was helpful. Besides repairing his window, she had outlined the most basic of basics of the ritual called the 'Holy Grail War', and given him a brief overview of exactly how much trouble he was in, which was 'a lot'. And then, as her very last favor, she promised to take him to someone who could explain the rest and let him decide just what he would do next.
However, she also said it would be safest to bring Saber with him. And unfortunately, Saber's otherworldly presence wasn't much help at blending in. His ineptitude as a Master apparently meant she couldn't turn into a spirit, like Tohsaka's Servant, so she'd need to walk, and tromping around downtown in plate steel would not be inconspicuous. Since she refused outright to remove her armor, draping a rain coat over her was the best he could do. It wasn't even a nice rain coat, unfortunately; he'd been using it as a bike cover. It was just that it was the only thing he'd had that would fit over the armor, and so they'd had to make do. Saber was hard to read, but even Shirou could tell she was not amused.
Still, at least it was marginally better than letting her out in full armor. Granted, he wasn't exactly sure how much better, because there was nobody on the streets to watch them, but still...
----------------------------------------
Somebody stood on the streets, watching them.
Ilya watched as the Tohsaka Heir… Rin was her name? Yes, it was Rin… and the boy walked in the direction of the overseer's church, the newly summoned Servant in tow. Ilya vaguely wondered why they didn't just have the Servant go into its Astral form, like Rin's Archer or her Berserker. Could the boy really be that talentless? He was supposed to be Kiritsugu's heir, surely he must be special in some way?
He was nice, though. She hadn't been expecting that. Ilya had not experienced a great deal of warmth in her life, and she, well… she liked him. He was kind, and gentle, and he'd told her she was pretty.
I should kill him. She thought.
It had all probably been an act. He was trying to confuse her, or… it wasn't like she had any proof he was actually like he said he was! Yes, now that she'd had some time to ponder things, it was most likely that he was just trying to throw her off her guard before the War. Kiritsugu had been like that too; he'd acted nice when he was around her, and then he'd left and never come back. The boy was probably just doing that.
But he smiled at me… nobody at home does that unless they want something, but he never asked for a thing...
As if sensing her discomfort, she felt Berserker's questioning in her mind. Not a thought, he wasn't really able to do that; what came through their connection was more like an impulse. But at the least it was an impulse that was simple to put into words.
Kill?
Never let it be said that Berserker needed speech or even sanity to get his point across. She supposed it helped that he only ever had one point to make.
Although she couldn't see him in his astral form, she could picture the black giant tensing to pounce in her mind, the impossible muscles corded in preparation. With one word from her, he would return to the physical world and slaughter anyone, destroy anything she commanded him to. It was all he could do, and he did it well.
"No." Ilya said. "Not yet. We should… we should wait until he's confirmed by the overseer. When he's a real Master, that's when we move. We'll kill them both, all right? We will."
Truthfully, there was no need to justify herself. Berserker continued to follow her in silence, just like always, no matter what she said.
But then, she hadn't really been trying to convince him anyway.
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Shirou did not like the priest.
This wasn't exactly a leap of logic; even from the few minutes Shirou had spent in his presence, it had become obvious to him that Kirei Kotomine seemed to take some kind of deep, personal joy in irritating everyone around him. But Shirou found him worse than most. Even more than Rin, who had spent years learning how to be annoyed at Kirei. Shirou was annoyed at Kirei on an honor student level.
It wasn't just the aura of smugness that seemed to permeate him, the air of 'I know all sorts of things you don't know, ha ha, maybe I will tell you some but not all of them because if you knew them all I couldn't look down on you'.
It was that some of those things he knew but wouldn't quite say hit far, far too close to home.
You can even heal those invisible burns... How had he known about Shirou's connection to that disaster?
I do not think a Magus exists that would waste a Command Spell that allows them to use such powerful magic... if there were such a magus, he would not just be an amateur, but a coward... Was it that obvious he didn't want to fight? It wasn't like not wanting to kill people made him a coward, in his own opinion, but he really hated the thought that the priest could read him so easily.
Rejoice, boy. Your wish will finally come true... No... no that was just wrong. Of course he wanted to save people, but he'd never wish for them to be in danger first! It wasn't the same thing. It wasn't.
It was really like he had been reading Shirou's mind, throughout much of the conversation. He repeatedly said things that struck more than they should, things that should not have been obvious to a casual observer. Shirou had been half-glad to accept his role as a Master just as a way to get out of that church, away from Kotomine's far-too-knowing smirk and simple yet piercing remarks.
Still, if he had been trying to provoke Shirou into fighting, he'd succeeded. Shirou Emiya left the Kotomine Church the Seventh Master in intent as well as form.Saber took the news well, in a quiet sort of way. Rin's Archer was less entertained by the notion that they weren't going to be killing the rookie immediately, but Rin loudly put that idea down. Apparently she couldn't fight someone she felt she owed a debt to, much to her Servant's chagrin. Oh, and she blushed and freaked out briefly over Archer suggesting she had a 'special' reason for being kind to Shirou.
Shirou was beginning to get the impression that Tohsaka might actually be kinda weird.
Still, she was awfully friendly for someone who claimed she was only being nice so she wouldn't feel bad when she murdered him later, so when she offered to walk part-way home with Saber and him, he fell in behind her almost automatically.
----------------------------------------
When he's a real Master, that's when we move. That's what she'd said to Berserker, and she never lied. Ilya had said that she would kill the boy, now that he was a Master. She could eliminate him and Rin, all in a single swift strike. They were no match for Berserker, even together.
They were Masters, standing between her and the Holy Grail. She needed no other reason to kill them.
And as luck would have it, she had one anyway: he was Kiritsugu's heir, the one and only remaining path to the revenge she'd sought for half of her life! She had pictured his broken body as her plaything a million times in her mind. All she had to do was give the order, and it could be a reality. She could spend the rest of her life making him suffer for… for…
It's not safe for a cute little girl to be walking alone at this hour. Would you like me to walk you home?
This wasn't fair. It wasn't supposed to go like this. He was supposed to be cold, and cruel, and turn her away, and then he was supposed to die while she watched and laughed, and… and… and…
She should be the cruel one. She should kill him, right now. She would. He and Rin, the both of them had to die, deserved to die for what they'd done and what they might yet do! She could do it, right now. All she had to do was give the order.
Just say it. 'Kill them all, Berserker'! Four words and everything I've ever wanted is mine for the taking…
"Berserker…" she said, watching as the boy and Rin began the long walk back to his home, Saber following obediently behind. "… let's…"
He'd walked her to 'safety'. He'd given her money for the phone, and bought her a little snack. He'd smiled at her, and called her hair pretty.
Just tiny, unremarkable little kindnesses, really. But, well, sometimes a little was enough.
"Let's just go home, Berserker." Ilya snapped. She knew she was hiding her discomfort with petulance, but she really didn't care. "I'm bored."
Without a word, Berserker materialized and lifted her in his arms to begin the journey home.
He never questioned her orders. Ilya liked that about him. When all her preconceived notions were turning out wrong, and her own mind and feelings were betraying her like this, Berserker's unwavering loyalty was all the more precious.
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Rin Tohsaka and Shirou Emiya walked in silence, Saber a few steps behind. Archer was nowhere to be seen, but his presence seemed to hang in the air.
The two students ignored them. Neither one of them, if they were being honest, wanted to think too hard about what happened next.
It had been discussed before, in a roundabout way. Tohsaka's actions in taking him to the Church had been repaying her debt. She had no other reason to associate with him. She was expressing open eagerness for hunting the other masters down.
Tohsaka Rin was a Magus, wasn't she? The real thing. And for a Magus, even 'repaying a debt' was unusually kind-natured. There was some part of her that couldn't be called a Magus, a genuinely kind girl who'd reached out to help him. But that other part...
"We'll part here." Rin said, interrupting his reverie. She gestured to the crossroads, one path leading back the way they'd come to reach the church, the other leading further into Shinto. "I've repaid my debt, and it would be troublesome if we stay together any longer. We should part here and become enemies from tomorrow on."
It would be troublesome if we stay together. A polite way to say 'I don't want to feel any empathy for you, because I'm probably going to kill you'.
Still... could he just let it stay like that? The truth was that he'd had sort of a crush on this girl from his school for a long time now. And though he'd found out tonight that she was nothing like he'd expected her to be, well... he still honestly couldn't dislike her personality, as caustic and snarky and occasionally goofy as it was. In fact, he kind of preferred her this way, nattering with her Servant and trying in vain to reconcile her Master attitude with the softer side of her personality that had led her to do a favor for a classmate in way over his head. He didn't want to fight her.
But then, he'd signed up to do just that, hadn't he?
Still, she was, very clearly, a good person, if colder than he'd expected. Fighting her... possibly killing her? It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. "Well... even if you say that, I don't want to consider you an enemy, Tohsaka. To put it frankly, I think you're a good person, even if you try to say you're not. I really do like your personality."
It was kind of odd to watch. First Rin's eyes widened. Then her face turned red. Then she kinda looked like she'd choked on something.
Then, finally and to his dismay, she just looked angry, sighed in irritation, and began walking away from him.
"Emiya-kun." She said, without turning around. "I... appreciate that you think of me that way. I do. But to be frank, I brought you here to drill into your thick skull just how serious your situation is. This is war, and if you want to survive, you're going to have to abandon that softness and go for the throat. Even with me.
"Don't let me see you again, unless you're willing to do whatever you have to in order to survive. Because if you don't start taking this seriously, the next time we meet will be when Archer is putting an arrow between your eyes... assuming one of the other Masters doesn't end you first."
Shirou felt his stomach fall as he watched her walk away without another word. He wanted to counter her claims, talk her down... but what could he say? He had offered her an olive branch, and she had more-or-less responded by setting it on fire. As quirky as she might be, was quickly getting at least one impression about her: she got what she wanted, pursued it with drive and passion. And she wanted to win this Holy Grail War. Her kinder half had led him here, to give him a fighting chance... but that colder half to her wouldn't allow her to give him any more than that. Now he was another obstacle in the way of her own goals, and if she had to go through him...
She might. She really might.
He mused that in a perfect world, something would have happened then to drive the two of them closer together. Some sign that even though they were in a war, they didn't have to be on opposite sides. Something, anything, to show her that there was no need for the kind of coldness she was showing him. He couldn't convince her on his own, but if something could happen to show her that even an amateur like him could be of some aid to her...
The silence at the crossroads was broken only by the sound of Rin's footsteps as she walked away from him without so much as a glance back. No sign came, no great threat emerged for them to stand together against.
Rin Tohsaka walked away an enemy, and Shirou Emiya watched her go in silence.
Saber watched as well, and nodded in approval when her Master fought down his obvious urge to speak. His actions earlier, saving Rin at the cost of a Command Mantra, had left her wondering if she would need to drag him through the battles to come if she wanted to keep the two of them alive. This silence, however, spoke well of his ability to come to terms with reality to at least some degree. The War had begun, and Rin and her Archer were their enemies. There was really nothing he could do to change that fact, and he recognized this.
Perhaps there was hope for him yet.
Spoiler for Author's Note:
And here we have the first effect of Shirou turning on the old unintentional charm: Ilya holds off on that first attack. Which in turn gives Shirou and Rin much less impetus to join forces, since neither of them gets hammered home just how nasty the other Masters can really be. What will happen next, I wonder? Well, Chapter Three is about 80% complete, so you won't have to wait too long to find out. I hope to churn out up to Chapter Four in rapid succession, and then I really should work on some of my other stories. They are sad and neglected. I just got caught up because this story picked up like twenty reviews overnight on FF.net. I guess this fandom is kinda starved for good fiction, eh? Twenty reviews for nothing happening yet.
I went with the UBW version of Shirou saving Rin (the one where he loses a Command Spell) for two reasons. One, that version always made more sense to me: Shirou just seems like he'd would rush out and desperately go out of his way to save someone in danger, no matter who.
Second, in the other opening Archer got badly wounded for a few days, and I needed him whole and healthy, relatively soon. For... certain reasons. Hee, hee, hee...
Chapter One and the prologue can be found here. Or just, y'know... scroll up the page. They're right there.
A day and a lifetime ago, he'd been wondering if he should be letting Sakura walk home alone (he had decided 'no', by the way, and he was glad of it. When he'd actually walked her home, he'd found that strange foreigners were hanging around her house lately, and then when he'd stopped by later to check in her grandfather had decided it was fun to creep him the hell out. Forget not walking home alone, he was considering not letting Sakura walk home at all. She could live in the guest house and stay far away from her stalkers and bizarre grandparents). Now?
He'd been stabbed through the heart by a large scary blue man with a spear. He had, somehow, survived this. How he had not died, he had no idea; all he knew for certain was that the scary man had decided to follow him home and kill him again to see if it stuck this time. He had argued the point… poorly, judging by the ease with which the superhuman individual had tossed him around his home like a ragdoll. He'd ended up kicked through the door of his workshop (or what would have been his workshop if he'd been a Magus worth mentioning), and had basically given up hope. He'd desperately prayed from something, anything… some way to survive, some way to insure his dream was not snuffed out before he even got the chance to start on it. And then, when he was at the lowest of low points with no way out and no shot at survival… that's when she'd made her appearance.
Impossibly beautiful. Shining in the moonlight, she'd called herself 'Saber'. She'd called him 'Master'. And she had saved his life, there was no denying that. She had faced the spearman and driven him off, when Shirou himself had been helpless to do anything but be batted around like a mouse in the paws of a lion. She was, like the knight in blue, a being of power; clearly more than human. More than that, though, while she was easily just as amazing as the superhuman spearman, unlike him she had a gentle beauty and dignity to match her obvious power. As annoyed as the young would-be-hero would have normally been by needing someone else to save him, Shirou was frankly too awed by her to care overmuch... even as she insisted on saying things he didn't understand and taking actions without listening to a word he said. She was simply amazing.
So he wished he'd had something other than an old raincoat to throw over her head so she wouldn't stand out.
It was Rin Tohsaka's fault, really. She and her own… Servant? They kept calling them 'Servants'… had been near his house, and Saber had, in another moment of 'not listening or explaining', attacked them.
Shirou had stopped her. Somehow, he wasn't quite sure… all he knew is that he desperately wanted her to stop, and when he'd shouted the command one of the strange new markings on his hand had vanished. He couldn't say why that happened (other than 'because it's magic'), he was just glad that it had. He couldn't be a very good hero if he let someone who called him Master walk around killing passerby without even explaining what the Hell was going on. Particularly when the passerby turned out to be the most popular girl at his school as well as... well, he didn't want to call her his crush, but...
In any case, Tohsaka had expressed gratitude at him preventing her from being skewered, and had entered his home. She fixed some windows, and expressed shock that he was too talentless to do the same. Nor was that the only thing he was mocked for during the course of their conversation.
He was beginning to get the impression that the fact she was a great Magus who wandered around at night in the presence of a superhuman killing machine was not the only thing about Tohsaka that she didn't share with the people at school. The sheer wickedness was also new.
Still, she was helpful. Besides repairing his window, she had outlined the most basic of basics of the ritual called the 'Holy Grail War', and given him a brief overview of exactly how much trouble he was in, which was 'a lot'. And then, as her very last favor, she promised to take him to someone who could explain the rest and let him decide just what he would do next.
However, she also said it would be safest to bring Saber with him. And unfortunately, Saber's otherworldly presence wasn't much help at blending in. His ineptitude as a Master apparently meant she couldn't turn into a spirit, like Tohsaka's Servant, so she'd need to walk, and tromping around downtown in plate steel would not be inconspicuous. Since she refused outright to remove her armor, draping a rain coat over her was the best he could do. It wasn't even a nice rain coat, unfortunately; he'd been using it as a bike cover. It was just that it was the only thing he'd had that would fit over the armor, and so they'd had to make do. Saber was hard to read, but even Shirou could tell she was not amused.
Still, at least it was marginally better than letting her out in full armor. Granted, he wasn't exactly sure how much better, because there was nobody on the streets to watch them, but still...
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Somebody stood on the streets, watching them.
Ilya watched as the Tohsaka Heir… Rin was her name? Yes, it was Rin… and the boy walked in the direction of the overseer's church, the newly summoned Servant in tow. Ilya vaguely wondered why they didn't just have the Servant go into its Astral form, like Rin's Archer or her Berserker. Could the boy really be that talentless? He was supposed to be Kiritsugu's heir, surely he must be special in some way?
He was nice, though. She hadn't been expecting that. Ilya had not experienced a great deal of warmth in her life, and she, well… she liked him. He was kind, and gentle, and he'd told her she was pretty.
I should kill him. She thought.
It had all probably been an act. He was trying to confuse her, or… it wasn't like she had any proof he was actually like he said he was! Yes, now that she'd had some time to ponder things, it was most likely that he was just trying to throw her off her guard before the War. Kiritsugu had been like that too; he'd acted nice when he was around her, and then he'd left and never come back. The boy was probably just doing that.
But he smiled at me… nobody at home does that unless they want something, but he never asked for a thing...
As if sensing her discomfort, she felt Berserker's questioning in her mind. Not a thought, he wasn't really able to do that; what came through their connection was more like an impulse. But at the least it was an impulse that was simple to put into words.
Kill?
Never let it be said that Berserker needed speech or even sanity to get his point across. She supposed it helped that he only ever had one point to make.
Although she couldn't see him in his astral form, she could picture the black giant tensing to pounce in her mind, the impossible muscles corded in preparation. With one word from her, he would return to the physical world and slaughter anyone, destroy anything she commanded him to. It was all he could do, and he did it well.
"No." Ilya said. "Not yet. We should… we should wait until he's confirmed by the overseer. When he's a real Master, that's when we move. We'll kill them both, all right? We will."
Truthfully, there was no need to justify herself. Berserker continued to follow her in silence, just like always, no matter what she said.
But then, she hadn't really been trying to convince him anyway.
----------------------------------------
Shirou did not like the priest.
This wasn't exactly a leap of logic; even from the few minutes Shirou had spent in his presence, it had become obvious to him that Kirei Kotomine seemed to take some kind of deep, personal joy in irritating everyone around him. But Shirou found him worse than most. Even more than Rin, who had spent years learning how to be annoyed at Kirei. Shirou was annoyed at Kirei on an honor student level.
It wasn't just the aura of smugness that seemed to permeate him, the air of 'I know all sorts of things you don't know, ha ha, maybe I will tell you some but not all of them because if you knew them all I couldn't look down on you'.
It was that some of those things he knew but wouldn't quite say hit far, far too close to home.
You can even heal those invisible burns... How had he known about Shirou's connection to that disaster?
I do not think a Magus exists that would waste a Command Spell that allows them to use such powerful magic... if there were such a magus, he would not just be an amateur, but a coward... Was it that obvious he didn't want to fight? It wasn't like not wanting to kill people made him a coward, in his own opinion, but he really hated the thought that the priest could read him so easily.
Rejoice, boy. Your wish will finally come true... No... no that was just wrong. Of course he wanted to save people, but he'd never wish for them to be in danger first! It wasn't the same thing. It wasn't.
It was really like he had been reading Shirou's mind, throughout much of the conversation. He repeatedly said things that struck more than they should, things that should not have been obvious to a casual observer. Shirou had been half-glad to accept his role as a Master just as a way to get out of that church, away from Kotomine's far-too-knowing smirk and simple yet piercing remarks.
Still, if he had been trying to provoke Shirou into fighting, he'd succeeded. Shirou Emiya left the Kotomine Church the Seventh Master in intent as well as form.Saber took the news well, in a quiet sort of way. Rin's Archer was less entertained by the notion that they weren't going to be killing the rookie immediately, but Rin loudly put that idea down. Apparently she couldn't fight someone she felt she owed a debt to, much to her Servant's chagrin. Oh, and she blushed and freaked out briefly over Archer suggesting she had a 'special' reason for being kind to Shirou.
Shirou was beginning to get the impression that Tohsaka might actually be kinda weird.
Still, she was awfully friendly for someone who claimed she was only being nice so she wouldn't feel bad when she murdered him later, so when she offered to walk part-way home with Saber and him, he fell in behind her almost automatically.
----------------------------------------
When he's a real Master, that's when we move. That's what she'd said to Berserker, and she never lied. Ilya had said that she would kill the boy, now that he was a Master. She could eliminate him and Rin, all in a single swift strike. They were no match for Berserker, even together.
They were Masters, standing between her and the Holy Grail. She needed no other reason to kill them.
And as luck would have it, she had one anyway: he was Kiritsugu's heir, the one and only remaining path to the revenge she'd sought for half of her life! She had pictured his broken body as her plaything a million times in her mind. All she had to do was give the order, and it could be a reality. She could spend the rest of her life making him suffer for… for…
It's not safe for a cute little girl to be walking alone at this hour. Would you like me to walk you home?
This wasn't fair. It wasn't supposed to go like this. He was supposed to be cold, and cruel, and turn her away, and then he was supposed to die while she watched and laughed, and… and… and…
She should be the cruel one. She should kill him, right now. She would. He and Rin, the both of them had to die, deserved to die for what they'd done and what they might yet do! She could do it, right now. All she had to do was give the order.
Just say it. 'Kill them all, Berserker'! Four words and everything I've ever wanted is mine for the taking…
"Berserker…" she said, watching as the boy and Rin began the long walk back to his home, Saber following obediently behind. "… let's…"
He'd walked her to 'safety'. He'd given her money for the phone, and bought her a little snack. He'd smiled at her, and called her hair pretty.
Just tiny, unremarkable little kindnesses, really. But, well, sometimes a little was enough.
"Let's just go home, Berserker." Ilya snapped. She knew she was hiding her discomfort with petulance, but she really didn't care. "I'm bored."
Without a word, Berserker materialized and lifted her in his arms to begin the journey home.
He never questioned her orders. Ilya liked that about him. When all her preconceived notions were turning out wrong, and her own mind and feelings were betraying her like this, Berserker's unwavering loyalty was all the more precious.
----------------------------------------
Rin Tohsaka and Shirou Emiya walked in silence, Saber a few steps behind. Archer was nowhere to be seen, but his presence seemed to hang in the air.
The two students ignored them. Neither one of them, if they were being honest, wanted to think too hard about what happened next.
It had been discussed before, in a roundabout way. Tohsaka's actions in taking him to the Church had been repaying her debt. She had no other reason to associate with him. She was expressing open eagerness for hunting the other masters down.
Tohsaka Rin was a Magus, wasn't she? The real thing. And for a Magus, even 'repaying a debt' was unusually kind-natured. There was some part of her that couldn't be called a Magus, a genuinely kind girl who'd reached out to help him. But that other part...
"We'll part here." Rin said, interrupting his reverie. She gestured to the crossroads, one path leading back the way they'd come to reach the church, the other leading further into Shinto. "I've repaid my debt, and it would be troublesome if we stay together any longer. We should part here and become enemies from tomorrow on."
It would be troublesome if we stay together. A polite way to say 'I don't want to feel any empathy for you, because I'm probably going to kill you'.
Still... could he just let it stay like that? The truth was that he'd had sort of a crush on this girl from his school for a long time now. And though he'd found out tonight that she was nothing like he'd expected her to be, well... he still honestly couldn't dislike her personality, as caustic and snarky and occasionally goofy as it was. In fact, he kind of preferred her this way, nattering with her Servant and trying in vain to reconcile her Master attitude with the softer side of her personality that had led her to do a favor for a classmate in way over his head. He didn't want to fight her.
But then, he'd signed up to do just that, hadn't he?
Still, she was, very clearly, a good person, if colder than he'd expected. Fighting her... possibly killing her? It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. "Well... even if you say that, I don't want to consider you an enemy, Tohsaka. To put it frankly, I think you're a good person, even if you try to say you're not. I really do like your personality."
It was kind of odd to watch. First Rin's eyes widened. Then her face turned red. Then she kinda looked like she'd choked on something.
Then, finally and to his dismay, she just looked angry, sighed in irritation, and began walking away from him.
"Emiya-kun." She said, without turning around. "I... appreciate that you think of me that way. I do. But to be frank, I brought you here to drill into your thick skull just how serious your situation is. This is war, and if you want to survive, you're going to have to abandon that softness and go for the throat. Even with me.
"Don't let me see you again, unless you're willing to do whatever you have to in order to survive. Because if you don't start taking this seriously, the next time we meet will be when Archer is putting an arrow between your eyes... assuming one of the other Masters doesn't end you first."
Shirou felt his stomach fall as he watched her walk away without another word. He wanted to counter her claims, talk her down... but what could he say? He had offered her an olive branch, and she had more-or-less responded by setting it on fire. As quirky as she might be, was quickly getting at least one impression about her: she got what she wanted, pursued it with drive and passion. And she wanted to win this Holy Grail War. Her kinder half had led him here, to give him a fighting chance... but that colder half to her wouldn't allow her to give him any more than that. Now he was another obstacle in the way of her own goals, and if she had to go through him...
She might. She really might.
He mused that in a perfect world, something would have happened then to drive the two of them closer together. Some sign that even though they were in a war, they didn't have to be on opposite sides. Something, anything, to show her that there was no need for the kind of coldness she was showing him. He couldn't convince her on his own, but if something could happen to show her that even an amateur like him could be of some aid to her...
The silence at the crossroads was broken only by the sound of Rin's footsteps as she walked away from him without so much as a glance back. No sign came, no great threat emerged for them to stand together against.
Rin Tohsaka walked away an enemy, and Shirou Emiya watched her go in silence.
Saber watched as well, and nodded in approval when her Master fought down his obvious urge to speak. His actions earlier, saving Rin at the cost of a Command Mantra, had left her wondering if she would need to drag him through the battles to come if she wanted to keep the two of them alive. This silence, however, spoke well of his ability to come to terms with reality to at least some degree. The War had begun, and Rin and her Archer were their enemies. There was really nothing he could do to change that fact, and he recognized this.
Perhaps there was hope for him yet.
Spoiler for Author's Note:
And here we have the first effect of Shirou turning on the old unintentional charm: Ilya holds off on that first attack. Which in turn gives Shirou and Rin much less impetus to join forces, since neither of them gets hammered home just how nasty the other Masters can really be. What will happen next, I wonder? Well, Chapter Three is about 80% complete, so you won't have to wait too long to find out. I hope to churn out up to Chapter Four in rapid succession, and then I really should work on some of my other stories. They are sad and neglected. I just got caught up because this story picked up like twenty reviews overnight on FF.net. I guess this fandom is kinda starved for good fiction, eh? Twenty reviews for nothing happening yet.
I went with the UBW version of Shirou saving Rin (the one where he loses a Command Spell) for two reasons. One, that version always made more sense to me: Shirou just seems like he'd would rush out and desperately go out of his way to save someone in danger, no matter who.
Second, in the other opening Archer got badly wounded for a few days, and I needed him whole and healthy, relatively soon. For... certain reasons. Hee, hee, hee...
Oh, Saber, honey, don't get your hopes up yet. You'll only be disappointed. Or impressed. Or a mix of both.
Hm, so this is what you meant when you said in our convo that Shirou's relationship with Rin would take a blow (or at least, I'm assuming that's what you mean!). It would make sense; really, Rin and Shirou don't start to grow closer until after the Berserker attack, in all three routes regardless of what happens after. If that attack never happens, then there's no reason for them to start drifting together. So not only does Shirou not end up close to Rin, but he might end up more in Saber's favor for not trying to stay with her when they're enemies in the War.
Also... oh, Ilya. You sweet, confused girl. Methinks you won't be able to kill Shirou. How funny that a single moment of kindness can completely shake up her confidence and beliefs.
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
Oh, Saber, honey, don't get your hopes up yet. You'll only be disappointed. Or impressed. Or a mix of both.
Hm, so this is what you meant when you said in our convo that Shirou's relationship with Rin would take a blow (or at least, I'm assuming that's what you mean!). It would make sense; really, Rin and Shirou don't start to grow closer until after the Berserker attack, in all three routes regardless of what happens after. If that attack never happens, then there's no reason for them to start drifting together. So not only does Shirou not end up close to Rin, but he might end up more in Saber's favor for not trying to stay with her when they're enemies in the War.
Also... oh, Ilya. You sweet, confused girl. Methinks you won't be able to kill Shirou. How funny that a single moment of kindness can completely shake up her confidence and beliefs.
You can really tell she just met him. We all know Shirou is hopeless
Heh, heh... well, it's a part of it, anyway. As for the rest, well, it will become apparent. Heh. Heh. Heh.
That much is canon, even; I just inserted it earlier than usual. Seeing Shirou dive in front of Berserker to protect someone else in Fate and HF was enough to almost instantly shift her opinion of him from 'kill that guy' to 'Okay, I guess I like him...'. The main difference is that in one route it turned into romantic love (or I guess 'obsession'), and in the other it became a familial bond. I wonder which I will use? (FF.net, by the way, has had a number of reviewers already calling this 'The Ilya Route', so it seems they know what they want )
Well, I personally don't see a genuine Ilya route working, because Shirou is not a lolicon, and sees Ilya as a little sister. Unless you can somehow obtain a new body for her, I don't see it becoming romantic.
FF.net, by the way, has had a number of reviewers already calling this 'The Ilya Route', so it seems they know what they want
I saw that, and I have to admit, considering the background development given to Ilya and Shirou's relatonship in the game through both Fate and HF (and from how you've developed them in the story thus far), it would seem very possible.
How come I get the sense that when you posted that story, somewhere out there someone cried "Finally! An Ilya route!", fanfiction part notwithstanding?
Location: Pennsylvania. It's sort of like a real state.
Age: 39
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover
Well, I personally don't see a genuine Ilya route working, because Shirou is not a lolicon, and sees Ilya as a little sister. Unless you can somehow obtain a new body for her, I don't see it becoming romantic.
Oh, you know... all H-game protagonists have a lolicon streak. I personally find it very telling that during the 'imprisonment' scene in Fate, when most normal people would have been thinking "Oh God, she's going to kill me and make a mask of my flesh", Shirou was thinking about how 'warm and alive' she felt. I mean, she was originally the fourth romance option for a reason.
That said, I'm not sure what I'm doing with the romance aspect of the story, or if I'll just... gloss over it. And if I want to make a happy ending (and I'm a sucker for a happy ending), it's basically required that Ilya gets a new body or it's not really happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
I saw that, and I have to admit, considering the background development given to Ilya and Shirou's relatonship in the game through both Fate and HF (and from how you've developed them in the story thus far), it would seem very possible.
How come I get the sense that when you posted that story, somewhere out there someone cried "Finally! An Ilya route!", fanfiction part notwithstanding?
She's a pretty popular character who dies in every route but one, where she will shortly... die. Not surprising her fans want me to give her a storyline all her own.
Though again... she's certainly going to be plot critical, but I kind of want all the girls to shine, so I'm not sure where I'm going.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GDB
I look forward to reading more "Ilya Route"!
Cool! More readers is always a good thing in my book!
2010-09-22, 18:19
Author
