Chapter 1: A new beginning to the end.
I do not own Fate/Stay Night:
o. o. o.
Emiya Kiritsugu was a man whose life could not be simply told. If one were to see him today, they would see a tired looking male in his early thirties who seemed to be trying to enjoy everything around him with a tired smile. He was a failure as a chef. He traveled a fair bit. He was fairly knowledgeable about military tactics and firearms. But most of all he enjoyed spending time with his son Shirou. The boy was not his own from what he told others, however the two got along so well that it did not really matter.
If one were to see him three years ago, they would have seen a cold calculating man. Emotionless, efficient, precise, ruthless… it would not be far from the truth to call him a monster in some ways. He weighed all lives on the scale of necessity, taking all into consideration and always tipping it so that the least amount of lives was lost. In doing so however, he paved a path of blood for himself that few could hope to match. A master of subterfuge and war tactics, and a practitioner of thaumaturgy, otherwise known to the uninformed as magic.
Emiya Kiritsugu was a Magus… and there was a reason why he was once known as the infamous Magus Killer…
However that was before the ending of the 4th Holy Grail War. Before he rescued young Shirou from the verge of death and adopted him… before he was cursed by the corrupted Holy Grail and the spirit of Angra Mayuu that dwelled within it… before he lost his wife and sacrificed any chance of seeing his daughter again…
It had been 3 years since the war. In the span of two weeks he had played the ultimate game against twelve other individuals paired up like himself and his temporary familiar Saber. The enigmatic King of Conquers who desired to rule all… the mysterious and pompous Golden King who claimed to own all… an insane cultist who sacrificed children and women for his own sick rituals and curiosities… contemptuous magi who participated only for glory… the noble dual spear wielding knight… the empty priest who gained pleasure only from the misery and suffering of others. It was a secret free for all war that left blood everywhere. He himself had had a hand in ending several of the other participants, and at one point had even destroyed an entire skyscraper in a failed attempt to kill the master of Lancer…
And yet at the end of that secret contest that claimed so many lives in the process… the only result was more lost lives as at the last second, immersed in the corrupted gelatinous liquid that spewed forth from the Grail and clinging onto his sanity and body as both were torn apart from the magical sludge, Kiritsugu saw what had truly become of their goal and the result of any wish that was made using it. He forced his summoned partner, the King of Knights, the legendary King Arthur, who happened to actually be a girl named Arturia and unaware of what had become of her prize, to destroy the Grail in order to prevent the artifact from potentially causing mass genocide. Its original purpose, to grant the wish of the winning Master and Servant of the grail war, was disclosed to him to have been the ultimate monkey's paw, in that the now corrupted item now granted the wish in the form of absolute destruction.
Utilizing it to open the gate to Akashic Records, the swirl of the root, the source of all that has been and all possibilities, the goal of almost all who studied thaumaturgy, as well as realizing the 3rd great magic, were all meaningless to him. He had only participated because he had been hired to, and so he could have his wish granted… to have a world of peace without violence. A world where he would no longer have to sacrifice the innocent in order to save the masses. He was tired of knowing that in order to save the many, the few had to be forfeited…
He still relived the memories in his dreams on occasion. Waiting for his father, who had condemned an entire island's worth of people to death for his experiments, to turn his back on him so trustingly… and pointing the gun at the man's head. He was only a child at that point in time…
Talking to the woman who he considered his mother, who taught him everything he knew about hunting sealing designates and other targets, about pretty much everything after his father's death, flying the plane filled with three hundred Dead Apostles above his head as he sat in an unmarked boat in New York… before using a rocket launcher and killing everyone on board…
Watching as his final order to Saber AKA Arturia destroyed the corrupted grail and caused a chain reaction that for lack of a better term nuked an enormous section of Fuyuki city, where he was living now… killing over five hundred innocent people in the area in the process…
Stumbling through the inferno that he caused, looking at all the people that he had murdered, and crying tears of joy as he found that single solitary boy still barely alive, elated that he could save even just that single life from that accursed hell…
In a way he himself was rescued by the boy. It was really the first time he had actually saved anyone in his life. Before all he had done was kill people in order to preserve the lives of the many. However, he had never truly gone out of his way to rescue an innocent. Maiya would have counted if it weren't for the fact that she was not innocent at all, a guerilla fighter raised at a young age. She became an assistant to his chaos since she was unable to do anything else with her life… until she was killed by Berserker in an attempt to protect Iriseviel… the homunculus… the living core of that war's holy grail… his wife…
"Iri…" The man sighed as he drank tea on the porch of his home and watched as Shirou stopped attempting magic for the night and went to bed. "What would you say in this situation?"
He had told Shirou about him being a Magus when they first had their real conversation at the hospital. And since then, against his own advice, had been teaching the boy the science of thaumaturgy… well he couldn't say that really.
The boy's progress was nearly nonexistent. He could barely get any spells to work even though he unexpectedly possessed an above average number of magic circuits. The best the boy could do was Gradation Air, aka Projection, and Reinforcing. The former, being the ability to crate objects from pure prana, was nearly useless in the eyes of the magic world due to the fact that it was inefficient compared to finding and utilizing the original object, and the latter, the ability to enhance a base purpose to its fullest such as making food more nutritious or making sticks harder, was too unstable and uncertain for him to attempt right off the bat. He did seem to have a knack for structural grasping magecraft as well, the skill that enables the user to analyze the contents, structure, and purpose of the object he focused on, but that too was nearly useless as other than gaining the user basic information it did literally nothing. Still, it seemed to be all he was capable of doing at the moment. Shirou seemed to have no affinity for the basic 5 elements and it was near impossible for him in his current state to find out what the boy's origin was… hell it would have been unlikely to have found it out when he was in top condition…
The Magus Killer stared at the moon silently, his empty tea cup sitting next to him and the summer moon glowing in the distance. The local insects making for a rather soothing lullaby despite the hard location he was resting. He did not know what time it was at that point, nor for how long he had been sitting there… nor did he care. For not the first or last time the man felt his consciousness fading away in that sitting position, letting his deteriorating body's exhaustion once again get the better of him as he fell into a deep sleep…
Gae Bo-
I ask… Are… master?
Ex… ber!
The images and voiced slowly fogged his mind as if he was barely watching several movies at once and half the scenes were out of order. The actors and effects barely registering as he switched from one scene to another… however as he continued to watch with increasing interest, the voices and images gradually cleared…
Sakura! Wh… happened to you?
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-ave to keep her away from Zoken, otherwise he'll just use her and cause more damage.
-the temple! We have to stop him before he completes the ritual!
Trace… on.
-less battles, meaningless war, meaningless happiness! This isn't what I became a hero for!
-ot! You've been making your nervous system into makeshift circuits every time you used magic? Do you even know how to use the circuits you already have?
-er should have been the one to survive. At lease he knew how the world worked and wasn't a fool… even if he was a faker like you…
No… even in his dreams… this was too real… it couldn't be possible… he had made sure that the leylines of prana in the area would be destroyed in the next 40 years… 20 years before the next war should start… but then how is HE still here?
I am the bone of my sword…
Hello Oni-chan… it's nice to finally meet you in person… Berserker…
Rejoice young man… your wish will finally be granted.
Kiritsugu's eyes flashed open. The scene he had closed his eyes to had been replaced with a morning environment, complete with condensation all over the back yard and birds chirping in the distance. He barely registered the fact that the morning sun was looming over the horizon or the fact that his aching body was even more ailing than usual from the spot he had fallen asleep in.
"Old man. You fell asleep outside again." Shirou's voice enabled Kiritsugu to further himself from his daze.
"I'm barely thirty two Shirou." The man sighed as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes before looking at the boy with a small wry grin. The red headed ten year old was already in his day clothes and had his apron on. "I take it you already made breakfast."
"Well you and Fuji-nee aren't." The boy puffed out his cheeks immaturely. "I've had enough fires in my life."
The Magus Killer snorted at that comment. While the inferno he inadvertently created was indeed a horrible event, Shirou's experience with flames didn't end there as the kitchen had been the location of at least 8 fires since the boy moved in… though most of them were during a period of time when the local daughter of one of the local yakuza attempted to learn how to cook in their humble abode. To hear the boy retell the story was almost as if he had gone through a holy grail war each time. Luckily though, despite the age difference, the teen and the boy got along just like siblings, which was relieving for Kiritsugu. He had no doubt that when he did die in the near future that Fuji's family would handle his property and take care of Shirou in his stead.
… It also helped that they were very willing to buy the firearms and ammo he still had on him left over from the 4th War. After the Einzberns cut him off shortly after his betrayal he was left with only the small accounts that he had always hidden "just in case" which was enough to sustain the two and pay the taxes but he did want some extra cash to blow every now and then. He still kept his Thompson Contender though… leaving a mystic code in the hands of the Yakuza? He was dying soon, but he wasn't stupid.
"You and me both kid…" He laughed. "Do you have anything planned for today?"
"Not really." The boy shrugged. "I was just planning on coming back home and doing some more magic studying. I think I'm getting the hang of my circuits now. It's getting easier for me to focus through getting my circuit to work…"
Kiritsugu paused for a moment, letting the boy's words ring through his mind for several seconds. His dream was already fading away, however what Shirou said had caused one part to stick out barely. "Shirou." The man asked carefully. "Tell me again how you are using your circuits."
The boy looked at him curiously. "Huh? I just calm down, take deep breaths and make my circuit. It hurts a lot. Like sticking something hot and long down my back, but like I said I'm getting used to it now. I'm not going to complain…" He blinked before edging away from his father. "O-old man? Did I do something wrong?"
Kiritsugu said nothing as he thought about his dream… or what he could remember of it anyways. The scenes that were brought up were far too familiar to be a mere coincidence, and it terrified him to be perfectly honest. Another war. Another massacre… despite his efforts to put an end to it all it would still continue.
His dreams… they were both a blessing and a curse to the man because he knew he would die soon. He was virtually powerless…
"Dad?" Shirou asked again. "Why are you mad? I promise I won't do whatever it is again… please…"
Kiritsugu took a moment to try and understand what the boy was talking about when he realized the feeling in his face. He could feel it being hard… emotionless…
He was back in the persona he had thought he had discarded when he had rescued the boy those years ago…
Calming himself down, the cursed man relaxed his features. It wouldn't do to get excited just yet. From what he remembered from the dreams, he… no, Shirou still had time to prepare for everything. "Sorry. I was just, beating myself up for missing something like this." He laughed. "I'm glad I caught it though. Before you go to school Shirou, let's just quickly go over how you are supposed to access your circuits..."
o. o. o.
Some hours later:
Kiritsugu was sitting in his living room making a list of anything he could remember from the dream he had. Despite how much he knew he had seen, the list was rather pathetic. It was a shame that Shirou was only now barely starting to get the hang of using magic... he was fairly certain he remembered a spell that could be used to recall information from dreams. He shook his head... no, even then to learn even one spell for most magai took at least a few weeks to do, and he was fairly certain that a dream watching spell would not make it to his curriculum even if he was a halfway compitent teacher, which he was not.
So far he could only mostly remember basic things, such as the vague color of some of the servants he saw, the color of their weapons, some of their voices, etc etc.
However there were other things he remembered that were unnervingly specific. For example, he knew that the archer from his war was still alive and would most likely play some role in the next war... the thought of the servant's presence unnerved him. The monster possessed far more noble phantasms, relics and weapons that symbolized and represented the power of heroic spirits, than anyone thought possible.
He also knew that Shirou was definately involved in the oncoming war. The boy's red hair and stubborn personality was impossible to mistaken for anything else. Thank the root he had actually managed to fix his bad habit of turning his nerves into makeshift circuits, otherwise the only way the boy would manage to survive the oncoming battles was either by pure dumb luck or if heaven forbid one of the other masters took pity on him... which seems to have happened according to his dreams.
Ugh... this entire debacle was already giving him a headache. Prophesies and visions of the future weren't unheard of. Far from it... however they either tended to occur within people that happened to have magic circuits that were designed to tap into the Root, or when the individual established some sort of bond with a significantly powerful magical source. Random flashes on the other hand, were borderline impossible, especially if he was watching multiple possibilities of the same event. Or at least he assumed so. Kiritsugu was not like most Magi in the fact that he focused his studies more on the application of magic to get things done, treating it more like a tool where as most prefered to take on a scholerly approach and immerse themselves in research and try to learn and discover as much as possible... by almost any means possible.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. It was pointless to think about other magi now. The only ones he had had a decent relationship with were the Einzberns, and he blew up that bond when he blew up the Grail. If he did show up at the Clocktower in England, he would need a damned good excuse for being there. Asians were not well recieved and that went double for freelancers, of which he once was practically the king of at one point. Unless he kept his visit low key, he would no doubt encounter some relative of a magi that he had killed back in his prime...
Though if he negotiated some kind of deal... he did have some tricks for breaking through bounded fields and combat tactics that he was fairly certain at least SOME of the pretencious pricks in the organization might be interested enough in to cut him some slack. He had enough experience with the Einzberns when he was married to Iri for nine years to talk the noble talk at least.
Looking once more at the list, he glanced down at the last thing he had manged to deduce from his dreams. Shirou was constantly fighting in them, however the methods he used were almost always the same. Somehow, the boy had managed to come up with a form of projection that far surpassed everything that he thought was possible. He seemed to be at his strongest when fighting with two swords the thinks... or maybe it was that red arm... regardless, projection was not as useless as it had originally seemed to the boy.
After what seemed like hours to the man mulling over everything he had written down, Kiritsugu put down his pen and slowly took the paper to his room. His old japanese style house was fairly large, however he took his time moving from one part to the other enjoying the spring afternoon to the fullest. Should he have more dreams, he would want it nearby to write more information as soon as possible. How many timelines was he watching, what were the abilities of the fighters, how had Archer lasted so long... these were questions he prayed he could answer soon, not for himself but for Shirou. For the boy he had rescued from what seemed like hell itself who did not know that he was in the care of the man that was responsible for destroying his past life. For the boy who did not know what trials and horrors were waiting for him many years from now...
Kiritsugu's eyes narrowed once more, donning a face he had once more assumed he had forgotten the shape of. He had found salvation in this boy and he had rescued him. The man was powerless, and he would die long before the oncoming events... however that did not mean he would not do anything to affect those events.
Very slowly, the Magus Killer began to formulate his next steps...
o. o. o.