Mirari Moon Wars Chapter 1 – The Fated Night
A/N: Most of the dialogue from this chapter is taken from the Anime, Fate/Stay Night. I will do my best in the future to avoid this but it was too fitting.
Fate. Destiny. Those two simple words cause more problems, more conflict than any others in history. On one side of the fence lie the people that say that time is like a river it only flows in one direction, never returning to its origin, on the other hand the remaining believe that we are simply repeating the past, that time is like a video tape, returning to the beginning after it ends. But what if time does both, what if every rewind was both similar and yet at the same time completely different…And that leads us to where we are now…
The sun had already set when Rin made it to the roof of Fuyuki High after weakening the 'Bloodfort' boundary field. Standing beside her in ethereal form was her servant, Archer. Her raven ponytails blowing carelessly in the wind.
"-and this makes seven." Archer said as he stood over a mark scratched into a tile on the rooftop.
Walking over to it, she placed her hand on top of the sigil before muttering something which caused it to glow and then fade slightly.
"That should delay them until I can figure out who the Master that set this was." Rin said as she walked over to the fence to look over the courtyard.
"I told Bazett that there was a master nearby." A voice called out from the edge of the rooftop behind them.
Rin and Archer quickly turned around to face the owner of the voice.
Perched on top of the metal fence was a man dressed in blue leather armor with a long blue ponytail running down his back and a cat-like grin on his face. As he leapt down to the top of the roof, a red spear appeared in his right hand.
"I guess that makes you my enemy." The spear-user said cheekily as he ran towards them.
Realizing the situation that she was in, she took off running toward the low guard rail on the edge of the building and vaulted over it.
"Archer, I'll let you handle the landing." She spoke softly to her currently invisible servant as she silently cast a gravity reduction spell to slow her descent to the ground. As the wind blew past her face, the girl continued her controlled descent past the wall of concrete and glass, smiling as her servant appeared beneath her catching like one would catch a princess before setting her on the ground. She ran towards the baseball field near the archery club's dojo as she spoke, "He uses a lance so we need to take this fight to somewhere more advantageous to us."
Suddenly, the lancer in blue appeared before her, forcing her to leap back a few feet.
"Archer." Rin said as she willed her invisible servant to take his physical form.
Archer was dressed hardened black leather armor that covered most of his body except his head and his arms. A red cloth jacket covered his upper body, while a red cloth duster hung down from his waist, and his black steel toed boots completed the look.
The blue lancer smiled as he remarked.
"Well done, you catch on quick. This will be fun."
Rin continued to speak as she tried to formulate a plan.
"I'm guessing that you are of the Lancer class, based on your weapon."
The Lancer smiled again as he drew his spear back.
"You guessed it." The blue knight explained eagerly, "Your servant however doesn't appear to be the type to enjoy close combat. Which I assume makes him an Archer servant and since we've crossed paths we've no choice but to fight."
Archer smiled and replied, "Excellent. What do you do want me to do Rin? I've been ready to fight for a long time."
Dismissively, she replied. "Alright, Archer. Show me what you're capable of."
With a smile the silver haired servant summoned a pair of curved short swords. They appeared to be exactly alike with a gold hilt and a Yin-Yang symbol on the cross-guard, however the only difference between them lain in the color of the blades. The one held in his right had a pure white blade the color of freshly fallen snow, while the other's blade was a black as a moonless summer night.
Archer ran towards the Lancer his twin blades at the ready.
"So the Archer thinks he's a swordsman, eh?" The blue-haired lancer stated disappointedly as he charged towards the blade-wielding Archer.
A sound like thunder was heard when the two warriors met.
Meanwhile, in the archery club's dojo…
A red-haired teenage boy that had just finished the task of cleaning the Archery Club's dojo when he heard a thunder-like sound causing him to look over in the direction of the baseball field.
"Did that come from the campus?" He wondered out loud before grabbing his jacket and tossing it on.
After quickly putting the cleaning supplies away for the next day, he ran outside the dojo and saw two men fighting with archaic weapons.
The sounds of steel clashing against steel resonated through the clearing as the red-haired boy watched transfixed at the swords that the man in red was using.
"Just where the hell, are you from?" Lancer asked as he easily dodged his opponent's strike before attempting a counter attack, "I've never heard of an archer who fought with swords."
"Where as I knew exactly who you were as soon as you appeared," Archer stated as they continued the fight, "there is no one who could wield as lance like you."
The red-haired boy gasped diverting the attention of the blue-haired knight.
"Who's there?" Lancer asked as he looked dead at the boy.
The boy realizing his mistake took off running away from the clearing, just as the Lancer broke off from the fight to give pursuit.
Rin's turquoise eyes grew wide as realization just what had happened hit her.
"This is bad." Rin remarked, "The school was supposed to be completely cleared out."
Meanwhile, the boy ran through the school with all of his might to flee from his pursuer, easily making it to the second floor of the building.
As he ran down the second floor hallway, he stumbled and rolled forward trying to keep his momentum before turning around to see if he had lost his pursuer, before leaning against the wall in the hallway.
"I think that I lost him." The boy said as he looked down the hallway on both sides to check to see if they were still following him. It seemed clear, so he let himself slide down the wall to catch his breath. "What the hell was going on back there?" He said as he tried to rationalize what he had just seen.
"Yo." The lancer said as he suddenly appeared beside the boy, causing the boy to panic and quickly try to get away from him, as the knight just stood there seemly not to be hostile, "You sure run a long way fast," He continued as he lifted his lance up, "but you can't escape from fate and now that you've seen us. You have to die." He stated before plunging that red lance into the boy's chest, piercing the heart.
"You know the old saying, dead men tell no tales." Lancer explained before ripping the lance from the boy's chest causing him to fall forward onto the ground. Blood quickly began pouring out of the boy's chest coating the grey tiles on the floor as the lancer carelessly walked away from the scene.
"I'm never going to save a single person not am I?" The boy said before darkness took him.
Rin and Archer finally made it to second floor several minutes and as she saw the scene, her heart grew saddened.
'It's my fault he's dead. I told myself that there would be casualties and I'd thought that I'd be okay with that.' She thought before turning towards Archer and saying:
"Archer, I want you to go after Lancer. He'll most likely return to where his master is. It is important that we find out who his master is and what he looks like."
"Understood." Archer said as he nodded his head before disappearing.
Rin carefully walked over to the boy.
"I'm sorry, the least I can do is sit with you as you die." She said as she crouched down beside the dying boy before gasping in surprise as she looked upon his face, "No it's you? You're kidding? Why did it have to be you, Shirou?"
She turned the boy's body over so that he was facing upwards as she pulled out the large ruby necklace that her father had given her, before he left her house for the last time from her pocket and held it out before her.
'I'm sorry father that you have an irresponsible little girl for a daughter.' She thought as she began channeling the gem's magic to regenerate the boy's heart and restore everything that had been damaged.
After the restoration magic had completed, Rin took off running down the hallway away from the boy dropping the necklace as she ran.
A few minutes passed before the boy, Shirou Emiya opened his eyes and sat back up, before cringing and grasping his chest for the pain.
"I'm alive?" Shirou asked himself as he looked down at the blood-stained hand that he had used to grasp his chest, before finding the ruby necklace behind him. "The person who saved me must have left this behind." He said before walking home.
Twenty minutes after Shirou had left the school, a woman wearing a black business suit with short violet hair, determined purple eyes and a small mole under her left eye appeared. Around her neck was a purple tie.
"So this is where you fought that servant, got discovered by a student, and then preceded to kill him before fleeing the scene, right?" The woman asked with a serious tone in her voice.
The ethereal spirit of a blue haired knight stood beside her.
"Yea, so why are here again, Bazett? I already took care of the kid and I've seen the master of Archer." Lancer stated cockily.
The woman frowned at her servant before speaking to him, "Look, as the representative of the Mage Association tasked with obtaining the Holy Grail, I can't allow innocents to get involved in this war. However I also can't allow the body count to continue to increase. So don't kill any more innocent people, I have a memory altering rune that I'll use on them instead."
"Eh?" Lancer stated out of surprise.
The woman looked her servant dead in the eye and ordered sternly, "Show me where you killed the boy."
"Tch, fine." Lancer stated solemnly before leading the woman to the second floor of the building where they found the blood stain not the boy. "Are you kidding me?" Lancer swore angrily at the absence of a corpse, "I was certain that I killed him when I pierced his heart."
The woman sighed at her servant's attitude before turning back and stating, "Track him down, he couldn't have gotten far."
Lancer quickly flashed her, a cat-like grin and pulled out a small stone tile with the 'Berkana' rune inscribed on it.
They quickly followed the floating stone tile as it began following the boy's footsteps…
Meanwhile at the Emiya estate…
"What were those two guys?" Shirou asked himself as he sat down on the floor of his kitchen as he tried to figure out the mysteries involving the two men who were fighting.
"They didn't seem normal, spirits maybe?" He said before immediately discounting it, "Nah, It can't be they looked too real and they were trying to kill each other. They nearly killed me." Shirou calmly brought his hand to the wound over his heart only to realize something. "Wait! That guy stabbed me through the heart. I had to have died."
While at the Tohsaka estate…
"Did you find anything out?" Rin asked her servant as she sipped a cup of tea.
"I'm afraid not, he slipped away when I was pursuing him." Archer admitted dejectedly before taking a seat on the couch. "All that I can deduce is that his master is not on this side of the river."
"Well that would have to do for now." Rin said as she took a second sip of her tea.
"I can't believe that you squandered a precious jewel on a weakness." Archer stated plainly causing Rin to blush slightly before yelling:
"That choice is mine! I still have plenty of those gems so there's no need for me to be stingy with them."
"Rin, I don't care that you did it. It's why you did it that it concerns me." Archer stated seriously, "It is imperative that outsiders do not see this battle. The rules are very clear on this point, if an outsider has seen us then they must be silenced. Even Lancer realized this and he immediately prioritized killing the witness over finishing that battle with us. Plus it's just a matter of time before Lancer realizes the witness is still alive."
At this Rin gasped as she realized what he was getting at.
At that very moment, the runed tile dropped to the ground in front of the large samurai estate.
"This is where the boy lives, Bazett." Lancer explained obviously disappointed in his master's decision, "I still say that we should just kill the boy and get it over with."
Bazett sighed before carefully opening the door, before stepping through the threshold.
"It's him again." Shirou stated fearfully as he felt his father's boundary field trigger, "I need to find a weapon." As he quickly leaped into action, he collapsed onto the floor clenching his chest in pain. After the pain subsided he began searching the room hoping to find something to defend him with.
Finding a rolled-up sheet metal poster on the dining room floor that his guardian, Taiga Fujimara had left, he quickly channeled some energy into it to reinforce it. Finishing only seconds before Bazett entered the room.
"Oh so you're the boy that my servant, Lancer failed to kill." Bazett said non-chalantly as she pulled a small talon from her pocket.
His eyes grew wide at the mention of the name, Lancer. As he brought up the metal tube like a shinai and pointed it towards her.
"I won't let you kill me without a fight." Shirou yelled as he clumsily swung the metal tube towards her.
Without thinking, she ducked under the tube and delivered a roundhouse kick to the boy's stomach sending him through the window and out into the yard. As he got up and took off running towards a shed in the back yard, she let out a sigh before following the boy out into the yard.
"Kid, you are really testing my patience. So stop running already!" The woman yelled angrily as she made a tight fist and ran toward the boy. "You're really getting on my nerves, I just want to erase your memory of this event."
Shirou brought his reinforced metal into a guard position as he stepped back towards the direction of the shed.
"You're with that guy who killed me? Why should I believe you?" Shirou stated as he kept his distance.
Bazett closed the distance between them instantly. She threw a straight punch at his chest that he instinctively blocked with his rolled up poster. The poster bent instantly beneath the force of Bazett's punch.
"Wait what?" Bazett cried out in surprise as the metal poster simply bent instead of shattering beneath her punch, before realizing the only possible explanation. She smiled before turning towards the boy, "Reinforcement magic, I see. Looks like I'll have to render you unconscious before applying the rune, fellow mage."
As soon as she finished saying that, she dropped into a martial art stance.
Hearing this, Shirou ran into the junk-filled shed with the purple haired woman right behind him.
"I won't let you kill me again." Shirou said as he swung the reinforced metal poster at Bazett, only to watch in horror as she caught it in one hand and shatter it, before dropping into a martial art stance.
"Checkmate." Bazett stated before saying and stepping forward, "I'll make this quick."
Meanwhile, while the two magi continued their stare down a large magic circle neared completion in the corner of the shed, behind the boy.
'I can't die yet.' Shirou thought as he struggled to find a way out of the mess he was in. Suddenly the back of his hand hurt as a bright white light appeared from the circle, blinding everyone.
Being dazed by the sudden burst of light and still being weakened by his earlier death he was surprised when the purple haired woman was grabbed from behind by Lancer and carried out of the shed. When his vision returned however he was even more surprised as to the reason why they had fled, because standing before him was "her".
She was a pale young woman of about seventeen with long snow white hair pulled back into a braided ponytail that was bound with a violet ribbon at the bottom of the braid near her calves. She was dressed in a black turtle neck style shirt and a black skirt over which she wore a crimson mini-jacket that covered both of her arms, a matching duster that hung from her waist to hide her pale thighs while a pair of black knee-high stockings and black sneakers covered her legs. She looked at Shirou with gentle crimson eyes as her slender lips turned into a grin.
"I am Archer, your servant," The white-haired woman stated happily as she gripped a pair of slender curved single edge long swords in her hands, "I've come to protect and watch over you."
Shirou just stared at her in amazement, unsure what to say or do.
"I mean you are my master, right?" The woman asked before turning towards the violet-haired woman and her servant Lancer before muttering something under her breath.
"We can talk later after I've kicked everyone off your property, 'kay." The white haired woman said with a smile, before exiting into the yard.