Title: Fate/Desiderantes Affectibus
Author: Rowan Seven
Teaser: A doomed master summons an equally tragic servant in the Fourth Holy Grail War. Together, can they change fate or will their journeys once again end in sorrow? Pre-Rebellion.
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: This story contains spoilers for both series. The Fate franchise belongs to Type-Moon. Puella Magi Madoka Magica belongs to Studio Shaft and Aniplex. This story is a work of fanfiction written for fun. I make no claims to either series.
Prologue – It Began With a Wish.
Matou Sakura was a lifeless shell of a girl. The violet-eyed four year old had suffered through days of her adoptive grandfather's crest worms burrowing into her body, and she now lay supine on the cold stone floor of the Matou mansion's basement, unresisting as the viscid insect familiars feasted on her flesh. She had screamed when her torture first began, but that only gave her tormentors another orifice to enter and violate, and struggling seemed to encourage the disgusting creatures. She had finally given up and stopped fighting back simply to lessen the pain.
The pain hadn't lessened, though, so she'd retreated into an unfeeling numbness instead. Mustering the energy to care again would only cause her to relive the overwhelming horror she should feel at what was being done to her, and for reasons even Sakura herself didn't understand her mind refused to take the alternative path of madness. It was therefore better for her to resign herself to this fate and accept that her life had become an unending horror worse than a nightmare, or so she told herself. After all, nightmares weren't real and could easily be escaped by waking up. Nightmares didn't continue past the point where you could no longer scream, you'd run out of tears, and hundreds of tiny monsters continued to violate your body.
Memories, though...those were very real and far more painful than any nightmare for the young girl now. Memories of a loving mother who'd always had time for her and whose warm smile could make anything better. Memories of a kind father who'd tell her bedtime stories and entertain her with magic tricks until she fell asleep. Memories of an older sister with whom she shared everything and who always protected her. Memories of a home and family when everything had been right instead of horribly, frighteningly wrong.
Remembering was one of the few activities that could penetrate the deep apathy Sakura desperately clung to. The past terrified Sakura because it reminded her of everything she'd lost and how she'd been given away by the same loving family she had so many happy memories of. They'd delivered her into this hell with barely more than a cursory farewell and dashed all possibility that they might come to rescue her someday. To them, to her birth family, she was no longer a Tohsaka. She was a Matou, and because of that there could be no escape for her.
It hurt. Thinking about it hurt so much, and yet...as much as she knew it was impossible and that it would only make her suffering worse, Sakura still hoped. She still yearned for those happy yesterdays. And so, deep within her heart, almost despite herself, and without any expectation that it would come true, Sakura silently made a wish.
Walpurgisnacht, the stage-constructing witch whose nature is helplessness, cackled in demented glee as she spun beneath her mammoth geared wheel and watched Mitakihara fall into ruin. Her destructive magic streamed chaotically throughout the city, sundering buildings, streets, and the earth itself with the force of a natural disaster and lifting the debris high into the sky in profane defiance of gravity.
It was terrifying. It was awe-inspiring. It was horrific.
But most disturbing of all, it was an act of kindness. The devastation was Walpurgisnacht's stage and the terror and tragedy her performance, and by creating this monstrous misfortune and encompassing it into a script she transformed all the sorrows in the world into nothing more than a play. Such was the warped compassion of Walpurgisnacht, whose alabaster and blue form filled the sky and more closely resembled a stick puppet than the young, innocent girl she had been long ago before she'd fallen into despair and madness. Before her hopes had become curses. Before she'd offered her soul for a single, heartfelt wish.
The Incubator named Kyubey knew all this and did not care. Instead, the alien creature who wore the guise of a white, cat-like animal calmly focused its attention on the young girl standing before it on the badly damaged rooftop they shared. She had the potential to become the greatest of magical girls and then the wickedest of witches, just like Walpurgisnacht before her, and all the Incubator needed to unlock the girl's magic was for her to similarly offer her soul for a wish.
Earth would be destroyed. The girl's mind-staggering potential and the inevitable fate of all puella magi could yield no other result. Wishes always betrayed the wisher's heart eventually, and when that happened mankind would meet its end at the grief-tainted hands of one of its own daughters. Over seven billion lives would vanish from the universe.
Kyubey knew all this and more and did not care. The Incubators had sacrificed human lives since the dawn of mankind to power the cycle of hope and despair that postponed the heat death of the universe, and in the alien scale of time the Incubators operated those many lives and the seven billion more that would soon join them would someday be offset. This single child could prolong the lifespan of the entire cosmos by more than the rest of mankind throughout present and future ages combined, so it was for the greater good that this species perish so other races and life-forms could flourish in the time purchased by their sacrifice. To do otherwise and pass the girl's potential by when so many could be saved...that would be immoral, and the only uncertainty in the Incubator's mind was the answer to the question upon which the entire world's fate rested on.
"Now, Kaname Madoka...What is the wish that you will pay for with your soul?"
The pink-haired girl turned partway to fully face the white Incubator with a resolve on her face beyond her years. Taking a deep breath, she clutched a hand to her heart and spoke her wish.
Heed my words. My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny.
Matou Kariya's entire body thrummed in pain as he spoke the words of power. The crest worms implanted within his flesh stirred hungrily as the magic flowed through him, and the prematurely white-haired man felt the disgusting sensation of them ravenously crawling under his skin as he continued chanting. Only hateful experience and the importance of his current task kept the bile from rising in his throat. He was a host to these parasites now and had endured their depravations for a full year to be ready for this moment.
If you heed the Grail's call and obey my will and reason, then answer my summoning.
The summoning circle he'd meticulously traced in blood on the basement floor glowed with arcane power as a mystic wind blew and strengthened, a prelude to the coming storm of the Fourth Holy Grail War of Fuyuki. The fact that Kariya found himself willingly fighting in this conflict as one of the seven masters after running away from his family and abandoning the path of the magus years ago almost made him chuckle bitterly, but thoughts of laughter always perished immediately when he thought about Sakura—his sole reason for fighting in this war—and what she was going through. He would save her. She needed him to save her.
I hereby swear that I shall be all the good in the world, and I shall defeat all evil in the world.
He could sense his "father"—actually his distant ancestor, although the knowledge that he shared any blood at all with the twisted old man disgusted him—watching him perform the summoning ceremony from the side of the room with a sadistic, self-satisfied grin on his face. Matou Zouken was an abominable existence that had shed its humanity long ago to live on through a body comprised of the flesh-eating blood worms that formed the Matou clan's magic crest. He was a leech that survived by devouring others and using his position as head of the family to bleed the life out of the Matous in his obsessive pursuit of the Holy Grail.
And let thine eyes be clouded with the fog of turmoil and chaos.
Kariya hated Zouken. He hated him for the torturous legacy all his descendants suffered through. He hated him for the horrors he inflicted upon Sakura to make her the next Matou heir. He hated him for the makeshift, excruciating magus training Zouken had put him through that had left him a near cripple and would destroy his body in a little over a month. And he hated himself for needing Zouken to actually be strong enough to make a difference and protect those he loved.
Thou, who art trapped in a cage of madness, and I the summoner who holds thy chains.
But even more than Zouken, even more than himself, he hated Tohsaka Tokiomi. The man had everything he wanted, everything he'd given away to protect Aoi and her children from the Matou legacy, and that despicable fool had still handed Sakura over to Zouken. Kariya seethed with rage every time he thought of it. Didn't Tohsaka understand the agony he was putting Aoi through? Didn't he know the hell Sakura would experience as the Matou heir? Did he truly value magic over family, over his own flesh and blood?!
Seventh Heaven, fly into great words of power.
There was no catalyst. Zouken hadn't offered one, perhaps preferring not to "waste" one of his hard-earned relics on someone whose chances of winning he deemed laughably poor. Or perhaps Zouken was perversely curious which heroic spirit his descendant would summon on his own. Kariya didn't know, and he didn't care. No matter which champion he summoned, no matter how little life he had left in this failing body of his, no matter how great the odds against him were, Kariya would move heaven and earth to win. A child was counting on him, a girl who could have been his daughter in another world and who was his daughter in every way that truly mattered except blood, and if he could see her smile one more time before he died then all of this would be worth it.
Come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of Scales!
Blinding white light erupted from the summoning circle and swept across the room. Kariya forced himself to remain standing as the buffeting magic washed over him, and in this all-important moment where the ritual reached its climax he opened his heart to the Holy Grail and voiced his wish hoping a hero would answer.
"I wish to save Sakura!"
The Holy Grail heard Matou Kariya's plea and reached out across time and space to the Throne of Heroes to select a champion.
"I wish to erase all witches before they are born. All witches in all the universes, both past and future. With my own hands!"
In another world, the power behind a young girl's selfless wish rewrote reality and transformed her into an embodiment of hope itself. Her newly expanded consciousness reached out across time and space to save her sister puella magi from the tragedy of their fates.
Two wishes. Two worlds. Two different universes that could never meet. And yet, like two travelers journeying down different sides of a broad river who look across at the opposite shore, for a single transcendental moment the Holy Grail and the newborn Goddess each saw the other across the gap between multiverses.
And in that moment, the Goddess understood. She knew that the Holy Grail was corrupted. She knew what the Matou master sought. She knew what would happen to him if left to his own devices. And she knew what needed to be done.
"I wish for a family again!"
A third wish, spoken months earlier but intrinsically tied to the first and made by one who would in the future become—in a loose sense—a witch herself, became the link to the second that bridged worlds. The Goddess, having made her decision, reached out across this link to the Holy Grail to give the best and the only gift she could to the desperate man and the broken girl he sought to save.
Hope.
The blinding light faded into a trailing blue mist that slowly seeped onto the basement floor to form a second circle around the still glowing crimson glyph. Zouken's eyes narrowed at the deviation from the traditional summoning ceremony while Kariya clutched himself in pain as the spell took its toll, both men wondering what would happen next. They didn't wonder long.
Heedless of its watchers and displaying a distinctive elegance, the nebulous outer circle took on the more definite shape of a round, five-line musical staff. Pulsating runic notes appeared and disappeared within the lines as an unseen violin performed the ghostly score. Crystal clear water that had no discernible source slowly trickled inward from the outer perimeter of the anomalous circle until meeting in the center to form a thin, liquid sheen.
Kariya watched what happened next with a combination of shock, awe, and disbelief. The head of a young, blue-eyed girl emerged from the watery disc. Her short-length, wavy hair matched her eyes and was decorated with a golden fortissimo pin. The white mantle of a cape followed as she continued to rise. Soon she was visible up to just below her waist, revealing a slender body clothed in a blue and white shoulderless top, long gloves that reached to her elbows, a diagonal-cut skirt, and a c-shaped gem over her bellybutton. The outfit loosely resembled armor, and thigh-length white stockings and blue boots completed the ensemble as the girl fully appeared and stood above the liquid portal.
"Servant Berserker," the puella magi named Miki Sayaka proudly announced, her azure eyes darting between the ailing Kariya and a calculating Zouken before firmly settling on the former.
"I ask of you, are you my master?"
Author's Notes: Hello, and thank you for taking a look at my new fanfiction project. As stated above, this is a Fate/Zero and Puella Magi Madoka Magica crossover that replaces Lancelot as Berserker with Sayaka and then explores the ensuing plot butterflies. The story is set chronologically before Rebellion so, while there may be allusions to the post-series movie, its contents will not be directly featured. Fate/Desiderantes Affectibus is, as of the day I'm writing this addendum, still a work in progress, but I've used the constructive feedback I received on earlier versions of chapters shared online at the SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity forums to make revisions and, after mulling it over, decided it was time to post the updated chapters in a single accessible place. I hope that you, the reader, will enjoy reading them.
With that said, there are several acknowledgements I should make. First, credit goes to the creative minds at Type-Moon and Studio Shaft, along with Gen Urobuchi and everyone else involved in producing Fate/Zero and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Needless to say, I wouldn't be writing this crossover without such compelling and thought-provoking source material to work with. Netflix has also been an incredible boon since both series (dubbed and subbed) are available via instant streaming on their website.
Second, fellow fanfiction writers "The Infamous Man" and Dminion heavily inspired this story with their own Fate/Zero crossovers: Fate/Zero Sense and Just an Unorthodox Thief in the former's case, and The Goddess of Hope in the latter's. Both have my thanks for sharing their works online where I could find and be influenced by them.
Third, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the members of the SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity forum communities who have offered encouragement, suggestions, and corrections as I worked on this story. It's difficult to convey just how much their feedback has meant to me over the months, but that this story has come as far as it has is in considerable part thanks to them and their feedback. A special kudos goes to EVA-Saiyajin and Kinematics for catching some of my more embarrassing errors and giving me the opportunities to fix them.
Moving on, I'll be uploading chapters one through nine of this story in the coming weeks here as I make final edits and adjust the formatting. Anything after chapter nine will be posted over at SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity first and then, once I believe it is ready, uploaded here. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to review. Also, for those who may be interested, Sayaka's stats as Berserker are shared below. Enjoy!
Servant Stats
Class: Berserker
Alternate Classes: Saber, Caster
True Name: Miki Sayaka
Alignment: Lawful Good
Parameters
Strength: C.
Sayaka gains increased strength as a puella magi, but she is not a heavy lifter.
Endurance: B.
Sayaka's healing factor makes her incredibly resilient, but her true strength lies in being able to quickly recover from damage rather than being able to withstand damage.
Agility: A.
Sayaka is a magical girl and possesses the agility they are famed for.
Mana: C.
As a puella magi Sayaka has above average magical power.
Luck: D.
Sayaka met a tragic end in multiple timelines, but she was lucky enough to have a precious friend whose intervention finally allowed her to die a hero's death and pass on at peace with herself.
Class Skills
Mad Enhancement - N/A. Modified and consolidated into Rhapsody.
Rhapsody - Self-inflicts Mad Enhancement, Ranks E through A. The servant also gains Pain Suppression (False), an innate talent to become insensate to physical injuries. Higher ranks of Mad Enhancement increase the rate of Soul Gem corruption, with nigh total corruption and the activation of Symposium Magarum nearly instantaneous at Rank A.
Runic Script: N/A
A class skill unique to puella magi. When the servant's status is viewed through a master's clairvoyance, all information is rendered in the runic script of the Incubators. Clairvoyance functions as normal otherwise, but unless the master decodes the language the information shown in the clairvoyant visions will be useless to him.
Personal Skills
Ally of Justice: C
Strength, Agility, and weapons gain the "+" bonus attribute when the servant believes she is fighting for a just and heroic cause. The same stats gain the "-" bonus attribute if the servant is morally opposed to the cause she is fighting for.
Decretum: A
The servant can rapidly heal and recover from any physical wound to her material body, fatal or otherwise. Regeneration of limbs and healing the physical injuries of others are possible with this skill, but both require an increased prana expenditure from the master.
Allegro: B
Summons spell circles with musical motifs that the servant can use to temporarily enhance her physical and magical abilities. Required for her Spark Edge and Typhoon attacks. The spell circles can also be used as platforms by the servant.
Noble Phantasms
Soul Gem – Symbol of the Maiden's Contract.
Type: Anti-Unit (Self), Rank: A
The crystallization of the servant's soul and proof of the servant's contract as a puella magi. The servant cannot die as long as her soul gem remains intact, and the soul gem is even capable of completely regenerating the servant's material body should it be destroyed. Conversely, the servant will die immediately if the soul gem is destroyed regardless of any injuries to her material body, and the servant's material body cannot be operated unless it is within 100 meters of the soul gem. Use of magic, loss of sanity, and negative emotions taint the soul gem, and the master must supply prana through his contract with the servant to cleanse and replenish the soul gem. The servant increasingly suffers from irrationality and negative emotions as the soul gem becomes more tainted, creating a dangerous feedback loop. Should the soul gem become thoroughly corrupted and blacken, the soul gem will shatter and the servant will disappear.
The soul gem bestows the following bonus personal skills to the servant:
Battle Continuation (A) - Makes possible to fight even with deadly injuries and can remain alive so long as the soul gem remains intact.
Instinct (A) - Refined sixth sense is now close to true precognition. The servant can "feel" the most favorable developments for herself during battle, and penalties caused by obstructed vision and hearing are reduced by half.
Magic Detection (C) - The servant can use her soul gem to locate spiritual entities, sources of magic, and active spellcraft within a range of 1 kilometer. Ineffective against targets with a high rank of Presence Concealment or comparable stealth abilities.
Cutlass Concert – A Sonata of Swords.
Type: Anti-Unit, Rank: C
The servant can manifest multiple copies of the cutlass associated with her legend. These cutlasses count as Rank D Noble Phantasms when summoned instantly, but spending additional time and prana can raise their rank. The servant is able to wield these cutlasses as if she possesses the personal skill Eternal Arms Mastership, Rank B, thereby retaining considerable fighting skills even when under the influence of mental hindrances.
Symposium Magarum – Symphony of the Witch.
Type: Barrier/Anti-Unit, Rank: A+
Miki Sayaka summons the labyrinth of Oktavia von Seckendorff, the witch birthed from her corrupted soul. The witch's labyrinth is a parasitic reality marble that feeds upon the life force of any living creature trapped within the distortion to sustain itself against Gaia's assault. The labyrinth takes the shape of a maze-like concert hall and contains scores of familiars who will fight to the death to protect their future master. Symposium Magarum requires the soul gem's near total corruption to be activated, and it can only be sustained for 30 minutes before the Law of Cycles shatters the soul gem to prevent Oktavia von Seckendorff from hatching. It is impossible for Miki Sayaka to deactivate Symposium Magarum unless she is ordered to do so with a Command Seal. Symposium Magarum can also be dispelled by finding Miki Sayaka within the labyrinth and killing her or by a rival noble phantasm powerful enough to disrupt it.