Disclaimer: I don't own Persona 3 or Fate/Stay Night. I mean I do own the games, but not the rights to the intellectual property.

Author's note:

Hey All! This is going to be the first story I'm posting here, so go easy on me :)

This story will follow Shirou of Fate/Stay Night as he is substituted in for the main character of Persona 3. This Shirou is from a few months after the True End of the Unlimited Blade Works route. At the moment, I don't have any plans to have any retroactive changes to the route itself, but I also don't plan on doing an entire rehash of the story for the uninitiated, sorry.

I took a lot of inspiration for this work from the story "In Flight" by gabriel blessing. If you haven't read it, I endorse it from the bottom of the sea of my soul.

I'm also not a fan of Author's Notes, so don't expect to see them very often, unless I feel the need to, or someone has pointed out something that may need explaining.

Now, with that out of the way, let's start the show!

*Story Start*

Monday, April 6th

Time never waits.

It delivers all equally to the same end.

You, who wish to safeguard the future,

however limited it may be…

You will be given one year;

go forth without falter,

with your heart as your guide…

"..dai"

"Iwa...dai"

"Next stop is Iwatodai, the terminal stop for this line"

I blinked slowly as the voice from the train's speakers roused me from my dream. I remembered a flicker of my dreams. Something about… words, but without an accompanying voice, but I couldn't quite remember the words themselves.

Due to some issues, the train had been delayed, and it was almost midnight. I had flown from London to Tokyo less than 12 hours ago, and had been traveling ever since to reach my current location of Iwatodai city. As if the jet lag wasn't enough, I was so tired from traveling I was practically asleep on my feet. At least my luggage had been sent ahead, so I didn't have to cart around all of my belongings.

As I walked through the turnstile out from the train, I saw the second hand of the clock on the opposite wall tick down to midnight.

3..

2…

1…

Midnight

Suddenly, the world around me dramatically changed. The fluorescent lights which had been lighting the station turned off. In fact all electronics turned off. The station was now lit only by moonlight coming in through skylights in the ceiling, which had taken on a greenish cast. The people around me had become entombed in coffins. A blood-like substance had appeared dripping down some of the walls and puddled in some places on the ground. What hit me strongest though, was the smell. Rin had always been amazed, and I think a little jealous, of my ability to sense magic as though it were a scent. It wasn't often I got to smell something good from it though, and this was no exception.

There was scent of… stillness to the air. It made me think of the dry, crisp air on a frozen lake. It was so strong it burnt my nose to inhale, and almost masked the scents beneath it. Second strongest was the scent of blood. Perhaps those puddles weren't just blood-like. Beneath that was an alien scent I couldn't identify. Under that, there was a smell of death. It was the weakest of the smells, but it pervaded the air, adding a haunting feeling to the world that the greenish glow of the moon could only feebly imitate.

For a moment, my sight was replaced with a scene of fire. A city aflame. Pain raced through my body, as the memory came unbidden to my mind. The scene clarified with the pain, and I saw it again. The dark tower in middle of the fire, with the flames around it licking away from it, as if the fire itself would be polluted should it attempt to burn the tower.

I tottered on my feet. Barely managing to catch myself before losing my footing completely. I felt my exhaustion anew as the memory left, seeming to take the last vestiges of my strength with it. Whatever had caused the world to fall into this state, I wasn't in any shape to deal with it at the moment. Before I could go anywhere though, there were a few things I had to check.

I walked over to one of the coffins nearby and, placing my hand on it, used Structural Analysis on it. What I found out caused me to jerk my hand back in surprise. While it had the appearance of a coffin, it was actually a human, but in perfect statis. It was something I had never encountered before. That could perhaps explain the smell of stillness in the air.

Whatever was trapping the person didn't seem to be hurting them at all, which was good, because I wasn't in any state to try getting them out, especially if this spell was affecting more than just the train station.

I didn't want to think about it, but the strength of the statis spells, and the sudden changes to the world made me think of a particular spell that I was familiar with. Perhaps something nearby had access to a Reality Marble. I hadn't been able to fully expand my own Marble since the fight against Gilgamesh, and even then the only reason I had been able to was because I had been using Rin's magic.

"I am the bone of my sword."

Reciting the first verse of my aria, I felt my Reality Marble react. Unlimited Blade Works unfolded within my mind. The blueprints and histories of countless swords flashed across my brain as I paused and felt the release of my magic. Inside of another Reality Marble, this level of access to my own Marble would be possible, but there would have been some degree of resistance. There was no such resistance here. Whatever had happened to the world, as much as it resembled a Reality Marble, it wasn't. I let out a sigh of relief, pausing when I realized that, while it wasn't a Reality Marble, it certainly resembled one; it could be dangerous; and I at least knew a little bit about Reality Marbles. Whatever I was in now, I had no idea what it was.

Releasing Unlimited Blade Works, I was once again reminded of how long it had been since I'd had a restful sleep. Since it seemed that no one was in immediate danger, I began thinking that I should probably get along to the dorm I was supposed to stay in and try to recover enough energy to figure out what was going on in this city.

My journey to the dorm proved my suspicions correct. Blood and green moonlight permeated the city. Where people had been walking in the streets, coffins now stood in their place. I had no idea just how far it spread, but it was possible that the entire city was currently in a blood soaked statis.

I noted with some suspicion that the dorm I was to stay in had the lights on when I arrived. Normally I would have guessed that they had left them on for me, but at the moment, they were the only functioning lights I had seen in the entire city. Tired as I was, I entered the building, disregarding caution in favor of potentially finding a bed to sleep on.

I paused a few steps into the dorm building to take in my surroundings. It appeared that the first floor was mostly an open area. To my left there was a reception desk with a small filing area behind it. To my right were several couches arranged around a coffee table, with a television off to the side, visible from all but one of the couches. Towards the back, and partially walled off was a kitchen and dining area. I perked up at the site of the kitchen. It was definitely bigger than the one I had been using back in London, that was a definite plus.

I was broken out of my cooking fantasies by a rather monotonous voice speaking from nearby.

"You're late." It said, drawing out each word and the pause between them, as if attempting to kill any inflection that may have been planning to come out. "I've been waiting a long time for you."

I turned to see a young boy standing behind the reception desk. He was very pale which was highlighted by the black and white horizontally striped shirt he was wearing. He had black hair and vivid blue eyes and was maybe 10 or 12 years old. For some reason, he reminded me of Ilya. I shook my head to avoid thinking about that any more, lest the guilt from that event take the last of my energy.

I narrowed my eyes at him. I was pretty sure he hadn't been there before.

"Now if you want to proceed," he continued, in the same tone as before, "please sign your name there."

All of a sudden he was right in front of me. Gesturing to an open folder on the reception desk.

"It's a contract…. Don't worry, all it says is that you'll accept full responsibility for your actions….

You know; the usual stuff"

He was definitely on my list of "Not human things that are not currently attempting to kill me", which was actually a rather short list. However, his talk of contracts seemed to indicate that I may want to move him over to my list of "Things that don't want to kill me now because they would find my soul to be a better meal", which was much longer than the first list.

Not yet ready to commit myself to a fight with whatever this pale boy was, I looked at the contract he indicated. There was only a single line of text on the paper.

"I chooseth this fate of mine own free will."

As contracts went, it wasn't much. It pretty much said that I agreed to be myself and accept the results of that.

I looked back at the pale boy.

"What if I don't sign the contract" I said.

"Then you cannot proceed." He replied.

He didn't seem to do anything, but the room seemed to get gradually darker, and a new smell of death entered the room.

I looked back at the contract. It didn't look like I was getting much of a choice on signing this thing. I had definitely agreed to worse contracts in the past. Although, admittedly, if a guy in a blue jumpsuit is trying to stab you through the heart for the second time in as many hours, you would probably agree to whatever Master-Servant, Holy Grail War entering contracts were presented to you if it could save your life.

I leaned forward and signed the sheet. When I finished, the pale boy picked up the folder and the room lightened back up again.

Stepping back from the reception desk the pale boy smiled at me as he held up the folder with my contract in it.

"No one can escape time." The pale boy said, turning the folder so that I could only see the line of its spine "It delivers us all to the same end."

"You can't plug your ears and cover your eyes." He turned his hand back, revealing that the folder was now gone.

As he finished speaking, the shadows in the room elongated and stretched unnaturally around the room, slowly covering the pale boy completely until he could no longer be seen. When all that was visible of him was his right hand, which was reaching towards me, he said "And so it begins." With that, the rest of his hand faded away, and the shadows spread to cover the rest of the room, quenching the light of the lamps. Rendering the room in the same green glow as the rest of the city.

"Well…" I said, grasping for an eloquent way to express how I felt about my current situation. "That was creepy."