Fate/Alternative Nights
I do not own anything related to FSN
Summary: Inspired by Fate Extra Nights. Emiya Shirou willingly participates in the Holy Grail War to heal his sister. Halfway through the war, he and his Servant were caught I a freak accident and sent to the beginning of war. Only, it wasn't his war.
Chapter 1
Emiya Shirou looked at the object lying on the table of his workshop, part proud, part frustrated, and part worried. He spent a lot of his precious time and a lot of trial-and-error using his skills in alchemy along with a lot of very valuable resources just to create the damned thing.
The working—hopefully— replica of the Jeweled Sword of Zeltrech
Of course, Shirou didn't try the sword out just yet, seeing as another creation of Zeltrech he met before lead to a disaster—an embarrassing disaster, to be exact.
He shall never forget the day Tohsaka Rin – of all people — acted like a total loon by declaring herself as the champion of love and justice, Magical Girl Kaleido Ruby.
If that wasn't embarrassing enough, she even went around both sectors of Fuyuki City to 'punish the evil villains that oppose love and justice.'
Needless to say that in the end of the day, Rin was VERY embarrassed when she heard what happened.
Apparently, Rin didn't remember what she had done during her time as Magical Girl Kaleido Ruby. That's why the pig-tailed magus threw everything related to the old Archmagus out of her house, so that she will never ever be reminded about that accident. And now a part of Shirou was asking himself why the hell he created this sword, or rather, why the heck he picked the blue print of this thing in the first place when Rin threw it out of her house along with the other stuff.
The red haired magus—or alchemist, as he preferred to be called—rubbed the temple of his head. He needed everything he could get his hands on by all means to win the Fifth Holy Grail War, otherwise…He shook his head at the thought.
Everything went downhill ever since the disappearance of his adoptive parents six years ago. And his adoptive little sister, Illya, fell into a disease that slowly killing her one year after his parent disappeared. Illyasviel von Einzbern-Emiya was a sweet little girl with a bright and optimistic view of the world, even after she became ill. He promised his parents that he would protect Illya while they were gone and Shirou would do anything for his sister to remain safe and cure her of her sickness. At least he didn't have to worry about money since the relative of his father, Fujimura Raiga, gave him a monthly allowance and the savings from his parents.
For Illya's sake, Shirou entered the Fifth Grail War and would do whatever it takes to win it. Though his ethnic code, ingrained in him by his mother, dictated that he only aim for the Servants and otherwise be weary of the Masters if they ever intervene in the battle themselves, save for that one despicable bastard. He would cripple the Masters later after their Servants were taken down.
He also allied himself with his childhood friend Rin with the agreement that he would be the one who make the wish to the Grail since Rin didn't have anything to wish for and her Servant's wish was rather, well, simply stupid. Why would a beautiful girl like Saber wish to be a boy anyway? Oh yeah, it was because she, the famed King Arthur, was a lesbian (he suspected though, that she was more likely to be bisexual, judging from the way she looked at him).
What a way to ruin an image, huh?
"So you managed to finish the sword, Shirou? As I expected from my Master."
Shirou turned to his side to see his Servant, Archer, peering from his shoulder to get a good look on the replica of the Jeweled Sword. Archer was a very unique and mysterious Servant; she looked like his mother and sister, from the pale skin, to the ruby eyes, and to their long silver hair, except hers was braided and decorated with a purple ribbon on the end. Even her personality was similar, although she was more mature than his mother. Though her class was Archer, she fought using swords, and a lot of swords. Maybe she was called Archer from the way she created swords from thin air and shot them at her enemies.
When Shirou asked her about that, Archer said she was able to create them thanks to a deviation of Gradation Air she learned and mastered during her lifetime, which she called Tracing. Or perhaps because the only Noble Phantasm she didn't Trace that she concealed in her left arm bracer that she called the Sealed Bow. Still, to think that she was capable even Tracing many very famous and legendary weapons that could be described as Noble Phantasm…Shirou couldn't help but wonder who she was.
All Archer said to him was, 'You'd flip if I tell who I am.' And that was it.
Still, he was very proud of her. Archer was so strong that she was capable of killing Rider, Caster, and Assassin with ease and eve managed kill four of the twelve lives that Berserker had in two separate encounters.
"Yeah, let's just hope this thing actually works," Shirou replied, turning back to the Jeweled Sword replica. "I don't want another 'Kaleido Ruby' fiasco to happen."
Archer giggled at the mention of the incident. "Don't worry about that, Shirou. You have better luck than Rin anyway."
"Thanks for the reassurance," Shirou mumbled. It didn't help with his confidence at all.
"So, are you going to test that sword now?" Archer asked, stepping back as her master stood up.
"Yeah, tonight. But first, I want to spend some time with Illya," replied the red haired teen as he left his workshop, but not before placing the Jeweled Sword of Zeltrech in the cabinet.
Shirou and Archer stood on the rooftop of Homurabara High School, the school where Shirou went to during the day, to test the Jeweled Sword replica. Shirou glanced at his red coated Servant who was observing the school ground and the area surrounding it.
"Any sign of other Masters and Servants?" Shirou asked.
"No, I don't see them anywhere," Archer answered. "Maybe we should start now."
Silently nodding, Shirou disentangled the white bandage around Zeltrech and mentally prepared himself for any kind of worst outcome. Steeling himself, the red haired teen prepared to activate the sword. Then, he just realized something.
"Hey, Archer?"
"Yeah?"
"How does this thing work?"
There was silence as a cool breeze passed the Master and Servant pair.
"You don't know? Aren't you supposed to know how the Zeltrech works because you created it?" Archer asked incredulously.
"I just recreated it! The blue print only told me how to make this thing, not how it works!" Shirou replied indignantly.
Archer shook her head and sighed. An idea then popped to her head at instance. "Maybe you should call its name? You know, like that Magical Girl anime Illya watches," the silver haired girl suggested.
Shirou threw Archer an 'Are-you-serious' look before he shrugged. Hey, it worked for Noble Phantasms, maybe it would work for something the Archmagus created. Taking a deep breath, Shirou called out the name of the sword in his hand.
"Jeweled Sword of Zeltrech!"
Nothing happened for a few seconds before the blade started to glow and the glow got brighter each second.
"It works!" Shirou exclaimed. But that joy replaced with a look of horror a few seconds later when he saw the prismatic blade started to crack and other cracks appeared in many places not long after that.
"Uh-Oh." Was all Shirou and Archer could say before the world around them turned to blinding white as the blade shattered, releasing a huge burst of mana.
Rin and Saber, who were on patrol around the neighborhood, felt and saw the burst of mana at Rin's school.
"Rin?" Saber turned to her master.
"Shirou…" Rin whispered faintly as she clinched her hand in front of her chest. "Come on, Saber! Let's see what trouble that idiot caused now!"
"Aren't you the one who always caused trouble?" asked the white clad Servant.
The black haired Magus glared at her before she started a mad dash to Homurabara High School. Saber just shook her head and sighed as she followed her Master.
Illya who was fast asleep in her room abruptly awoke when she felt it. Something happened to her brother.
"Onii-chan…" the little girl whispered as she looked at the window. She offered a little prayer to her brother, praying for his safety.
"Shirou…Shirou…Wake up…Please wake up, Shirou…"
A pair of ochre eyes opened slowly and painfully as Shirou's consciousness returned to him. The first thing he saw was Archer's concerned face. His body was very sore all over. Like, he was on the night where he tried to activate his magic circuit years ago. That soreness went away little by little by the time he finally regained all of his senses.
"Archer…? Where are we?" Shirou asked groggily.
"It seems we're still at school," Archer answered as she looked around.
Shirou and Archer weren't on the rooftop anymore. They found themselves behind bushes and a tree on the Homurabara High School court. Shirou sat up to get a better look with Archer helping him. Indeed they were still at the school, but something was different. Before he was able to tell what was different, one of his senses tugged at him. He turned to Archer whose expression just as stony as his.
"You feel that?"
"Yes, there are Servants here, two of them to be exact, and one Master," Archer summed. "What are your orders, Shirou?" While Archer at times acted like his mother and sister with more maturity than both of them combined, there will be moments where she acted like a professional on her field, in this case a Servant.
"We'll look at the situation at first. We don't know what happened to us after the Zeltrech exploded, so we sit back and watch before we decide to act," Shirou explained his plan to Archer.
"Understood," the red coated girl acknowledged as she crouched behind the bush like her Master did.
They saw someone who jumped from the rooftop and landed perfectly on the ground. That person was none other than Tohsaka Rin, dressed in the school uniform with a red coat draped over her shoulders. She then started a mad dash toward the exit, only to have a blue blur block her way. Shirou narrowed his eyes when he recognized the blue blur as Lancer, the cocky grinning bastard. The red haired alchemist remembered when he faced the knight of spear on his first fight, only to had him escaped just when Archer about to finish him off.
"Hey, hey, lass. Where are you going? Do you think you can just walk away like that, hmm?" Lancer taunted.
Shirou saw Rin grit her teeth before she called out.
"Archer!"
To Shirou and his Servant shock, a man dressed in a similar manner as Shirou's Archer materialized in front of the black haired girl. The red coat was the same, but the armor he wore underneath was tailored to fit the body of a man and he wore black trousers instead. The man had silver hair and steel gray eyes and dark skin.
The male Archer stood protectively in front of his master and a pair of familiar twin swords appeared out of thin air on his hands, which Shirou and his Archer immediately recognized. Otto and Bonifatius, the pair of white and black sword that Archer favored aside from those nameless swords she shot at her enemies, though it was different than Shirou's Archer had. The swords the male Archer had were short and wide, while female Archer's were more elongated and slender.
As Lancer taunted the other Archer while they were locked in combat, Shirou came to a conclusion from his hiding place.
"Archer, remind me to bash my head later when we get out of here for picking up that damned blueprint and recreating that twice damned sword. Then remind me to beat up Zeltrech badly for creating that thing in the first place when we get home," Shirou muttered while Archer looked at her Master incredulously. "I think we were sent into a parallel universe thanks to that explosion."
Archer's red eyes widened when she finally registered what her Master said. Her eyes then narrowed as she returned to watch the combat between her counterpart and Lancer.
"Right, but please leave some for me when you beat up Zeltrech," Archer growled lowly. "This is the second time that old fart messed up my life with his creation."
Shirou nodded, pushing aside his curiousness about Archer's words. All of them froze when they heard sound of branch snapping. It wasn't from Shirou and Archer's place, but it was from bushes near the Archery Club building. That meant only one thing.
There was a witness.
And according to the Holy Grail War's rules, there should be no witness during combat.
Any witness who saw the part of the war should be dealt with accordingly.
"Shit! Archer!"
Wordlessly, Archer gave chase to Lancer whom went to chase the witness with Shirou in tow. The other Archer spoke to his Master before Rin told him to chase Lancer, unknowing of the fourth party.
Archer leapt through the stairs and corridors as she tried to stop Lancer killing the witness. It was against her ethic code and Shirou's to kill any innocents during the fight. Thank God her Master knew about hypnotist. When she caught up with Lancer, the blue clad heroic spirit had killed the witness. Anger swelled inside her as she saw the victim fell lifelessly to the ground. Tracing Otto and Bonifatius in her hands, Archer pushed Od to her legs and leapt toward Lancer with her swords crossed to strike. The knights of spear barely dodged her attack, allowing X-shaped cut marked his chest.
"Who the—?"
Lancer wasn't able to finish his question as Archer attacked him in flurry of black and white blurs against Lancer's crimson spear. Lancer grit his teeth in frustration as he was being pushed back by his mysterious attacker. He was clearly taken aback by the appearance of this mysterious Servant. She dressed like that sword wielding Archer he fought earlier, hell the way she fought was exactly the same as he was but only much faster!
"Who are you, lass?" Lancer asked, his tone curious.
"I don't need to give my name to a dead man," Archer deadpanned.
The silver haired Servant slashed with both of her swords and Lancer blocked using his spear, but he was pushed back by the attack. Lancer growled as he recovered, but he heard rumbling sounds around him and jumped just in time to dodge several concrete spears threatening to skewer him. Behind Archer, Shirou kneeled with both of his hands, now covered with white gloves with transmutation circle stitched on the back, planted to the ground. Lancer's eyes widened at the sight of the red haired Master.
"You?-! But I already killed you!" the Hound of Ulster yelled out in surprise.
Dread filled Shirou's stomach as he heard that statement from Lancer. He was so focused with him so he promptly ignored the dead body laid behind his Servant. He and Archer glanced at the dead body, only to have his fears confirmed. The mirror copy of himself with stab wound on the chest, no doubt Lancer's doing, dead to the world.
"Scratch beating Zeltrech to a pulp when I get back home, I'm going to kill him in the worst way possible," Shirou muttered darkly as he planned what kind of gruesome way to kill the Archmagus with his alchemy.
"I prefer to skin that man alive and sunk him in acid pool and showered him with lemon juice. Death will be too kind for him," Archer added her two cents. Her tone was as dark as her master was, if not darker.
Lancer visibly gulped when he saw the dark aura emitting from Master and Servant duo.
"What's going on here?-!" Rin's voice rang in the hallway.
As Shirou and his Servant shifted to the newcomer, Lancer quickly escaped from the scene with only one thought in his mind.
'This has been a very shitty day…'
Rin stared disbelievingly when she saw two Emiya Shirous before her. One was lying on the ground, bleeding and probably dead, while the other Shirou was still standing, looking exasperated with a girl who was presumably his Servant, dressed similarly to her Archer and even armed like him, standing next to the teen.
Archer also looked disbelieving just like his Master, but he had very accurate suspicion on what in the name of Root was happening here. That aside, there was something about the other version of his past and his Servant that picked his interest. The gloves on his hands for example, had transmutation circles stitched on their back. He was probably an alchemist and he had a posture of a true magus, which was probably good compared to his actual past self. The girl who was his Servant looked like Archer's long dead adoptive little sister, instead of the blonde haired Saber that he knew. She dressed just like him and even had Kanshou and Bakuya, although a different version. Perhaps she was Counter Guardian like himself?
"Wh-Who are you? W-Why do you look like Emiya-kun?" Rin asked as she prepared to shoot Gand from her finger tip.
Shirou sighed as his shoulder slumped. "There's no need to shoot your childhood friend with Gand, Rin." His statement caught the young Tohsaka off guard.
"C-Childhood friend?" Rin sputtered while her Archer raised one of his eyebrows. "Just who the hell are you! And why do you have a Servant!"
"My name is Emiya Shirou and I am the Master of Archer of the Fifth Holy Grail War," Shirou introduced himself and motioned to his Archer who had dismissed her swords.
Rin and her Archer's mouths gaped at that.
"….Or it used to be like that in our home universe," the female Archer added with a deep sigh.
"Used to be? Home universe?" Rin asked while the male Archer's suspicion proved to be correct.
"It's all Zeltrech's fault," Shirou and his Archer deadpanned at the same time.
A/N: First Chapter is done. The AU where Shirou came from is similar to Kalleid Liner Prisma Illya universe, but with some difference. Kiritsugu and Iris disappeared in the middle of their business, Illya is sick, Sella and Leysritt aren't with Emiya family, Shirou and Rin are childhood friends, and of course the Holy Grail War is still going. AU!Shirou's Servant is Archerko from 'Sword Dancer' doujinshi. I choose her because she's kinda cool, cooler than Saber. I also have my own interpretation of Archerko's past, which was still a part of my AU. AU!Rin's Servant is Saber Lily, with the personality a complete flip from Canon!Saber. So, what do you think? Is it good? Or is it bad?
A/N 2: Thanks to DawningShadows for editing this chapter.