Author's Notes:
Here it is, Chapter One! The first actual installment of my story! I had initially hoped to get all the way through Shinji's childhood and training in the firs chapter, but I realized while I was writing this that there was no way I was getting that under 20,000 words. So I decided to cut it off at a point I thought worked for the narrative. It's still a bit shorter than I intend to make my chapters, going forward, but it also came out several days short of the projected 1 week writing time from the prologue!
One other thing to mention before I start the story off proper, I discovered that you can't review the same chapter more than once. This means I can't keep answering review questions in that section as I'd hoped. From now on I'll be posting answers to the reviews in these notes. All the questions I have right now are either answered below or would be spoilers for the story if I answered them, so I don't have any responses to post today.
Finally, please leave a review with all your compliments, complaints, questions, and corrections, especially if you find a part of the Nasuverse canon I've messed up!
Chapter One – Childhood in the House of Matou
Shinji would have been intelligent regardless of whether a geas were placed on him. The talent in magecraft he lacked was thoroughly present in regards to mundane academia, and even at six it would have been apparent to a caring family that Shinji was a genius. Matou Shinji didn't have a caring family, of course.
All Zouken and Byakuya cared about was that he lacked magic circuits, making him an irredeemable failure in their eyes. Without a geas warping his mind and imbuing him with artificial purpose, this combination of talent and disregard might have made Shinji into a warped soul, channeling his intelligence into useless pursuits and seeking only to prove his superiority over the "plebeian masses".
Kariya had turned Shinji from this path, though, and ensured that Shinji's mind would be completely devoted to the study of magecraft.
With the first precept of the geas firmly dominating his thoughts, Shinji became utterly obsessed with magic. Although he went to bed after his chat with his uncle normally enough, Shinji's brain seemed to be on fire when he woke up the next morning. He could think of nothing but magic, and pestered his father and grandfather about it all day, earning not a few smacks from Byakuya and canings from Zouken.
Eventually Shinji had snuck out of the house and made his way to the local library, where he read everything about magic that he could get his hands on. From fairy tales to fantasy novels, and even a (very dry) biography of Paracelsus von Hohenheim, Shinji read it all. Mundane readings kept Shinji occupied for two years, but although they swelled his vocabulary impressively they did nothing for his knowledge of magecraft. In the mundane writings he found, magic was not only fictional; it was chained, tame, a tool as inert as a sword. It was nothing like the fearsome idea of a rampaging force in need of restraint that Kariya had impressed on him.
With that in mind, Shinji decided at eight that he would sneak into his father's study and begin to learn the true secrets of the Matou. The break-in was a thing easily enough done. Shinji's father spent very little time in his study these days. On Shinji's eighth birthday, Matou Byakuya had actually slept through the entire day, sweating out the residue of a long night on a barstool, completely unaware of his distraught son downstairs. It was not an unusual occurrence for the hopeless magus.
It was a similar day now, as Byakuya tossed and turned, moaning through his hangover. Shinji made his way into the empty study as slowly and silently as he could, still fearful that his father or grandfather would find him.
Shinji's first sight of his father's study was a shock to his system. It was so much less forbidding than he'd been expecting! Shinji's heart had been pounding as he crept towards the forbidden room, sealed behind a heavy old oak door and forbidden by his family, but when he got in his impression changed completely. Byakuya's study was the most inviting and comfortable place in the entire house.
Faint sunlight gave the room its grey illumination as it crept through closed curtains that hid a large picture window. Below the window, at the far end of the room, sat a massive mahogany and leather desk, the type of thing that simply radiated a feeling of luxury. The desk itself was piled high with loose notes and stacked journals that seemed not to have been touched in years.
On either side of the desk the walls were covered by massive bookshelves, crammed floor-to-ceiling with the accumulated knowledge of the Matou family, and below them the floor was covered in a rich burgundy carpet, just thick enough to mute the sound of footfalls without being deep enough to imply decadence. On one side was a massive fireplace, and Shinji thought looking at it that a person using the study could keep warm in here in midwinter, even if the rest of the house was left totally unheated. There were also, piled around the fireplace, a variety of abandoned magical implements. Beakers, tubes, alembics, retorts, candles, brushes, chalk, a cauldron, and numerous exotic tools Shinji didn't recognize littered the hearth.
Everything was gathering dust, left untouched by the ostensible head of the Matou as he drowned himself a bottle at a time.
The most impressive aspect of the study in Shinji's view, though, was the sound. Or rather, it was the lack of sound. Throughout the Matou house the chittering of insects was a constant companion to all inhabitants. One could never escape the noise of Zouken's myriad followers, or evade the sight of them moving just in the shadows, barely at the edge of vision. Some nights Shinji had tried plugging his ears, but the sound somehow made its way through, and he'd gone many a day on no more than an hour of sleep. The study, however, was blessedly silent and free of insects.
As Shinji was taking in all this wonderment and trying to decide which book he'd read first, his grandfather appeared. Shinji hadn't heard his cane on the floorboards in the hall, hadn't heard him open the door and walk up behind him. Shinji was simply alone in the silent study one moment and the next there was a withered hand on his shoulder. Shinji froze in terror. As he did so, he felt something move, almost imperceptibly, under the skin of his grandfather's hand.
Slowly, shivering in fearful anticipation of the beating he would soon receive from Zouken's cane. Shinji looked up at his grandfather's face. There, Shinji saw something that would have shocked him into a terrified paralysis if he hadn't received such a fright a moment before. It was something that didn't belong on his grandfather's face. Something Shinji had never seen there before.
It wasn't the twisted mask of fury Zouken had turned on Shinji after he'd killed a strange worm in the garden (the Matou never killed insects, Shinji learned that day, because everything could have a use; even "something as worthless and idiotic as you, you pathetic whelp!") It wasn't the cold, disappointed look he turned on Shinji when the boy made a small mistake, one only requiring a strike over the knuckles, or the neutral, assessing expression Zouken turned on most of the world, either. It wasn't even the wry, rotten smirk of malevolent good cheer Zouken wore when he took Sakura down into the basement. It was so alien, so impossible, that Shinji's first response was to blink rapidly to clear whatever had gotten in his eyes.
Nothing had. Shinji was looking at a smile on his grandfather's face. It was a warm, proud, kind smile. In any other family it would have been called grandfatherly. It reminded Shinji of his uncle Kariya, as he had been when Shinji was younger, when his hair had been the right color.
"You found it on your own! This is the first time I've been proud of one of my descendants in a long while, you know. It's your first glimmer of worth, so do treasure it," Zouken said, an actual note of warmth creeping into his usually dry and hateful voice.
"Kariya and Byakuya didn't seek out the study, you know. With them it was always forced. I had to beat any knowledge of magic into Byakuya, and Kariya just wouldn't listen no matter what I did! But look at you, asking your father, reading about the Art in the library, even sneaking into the study while that wretch is passed out drunk! I'm proud, boy. Consider this a success in your second great test. You may never be able to use magecraft, but in here you'll at least learn of our ways."
Before Shinji had time to respond to this hitherto unimaginable outpouring of positivity, Zouken swept him forward and sat him roughly down in the chair in front of Byakuya's desk. Then he set a heavy tome down in front of Shinji, kicking up a great cloud of dust that filled Shinji's eyes and nose for a moment.
When he finished coughing and wiped his eyes, Shinji could see that the book was bound in a rich oxblood leather, and the gold lettering on the cover proclaimed it to be "The Five Elements: A Mystic Primer for Fresh Initiates" by someone with (in Shinji's opinion) entirely too many hyphens in his name.
"Grandfather, thank you! This is wonderful, I swear I won't dis-" there Shinji was cut off by the tightening of his Zouken's hand on his shoulder, pressing hard enough to send a shocking bolt of pain down the boy's arm.
"You will disappoint me, Shinji. Don't make it worse by lying to me. Still, I'm glad you're seeking out your own education. Come to me when you've finished that book and I'll tell you what to read next. Make sure you understand what you read, and don't take more than a month to get through it. That would really be pathetic."
With those words, Zouken turned and walked out of the room, the pounding of his cane muted by the thick carpeting. Shinji sent goodwill after him with one more "Thank you, grandfather," but if Zouken heard he gave no sign.
Shinji turned back to the book. If he had ever seen a Christian bible he might have noticed that the "Primer" was slightly thicker than one. He would be spending a lot of time reading in the near future.
As Zouken made his way down from the study into the rest of the Matou home, he let out a dry chuckle. It had been some time since he'd been kind to one of the Makiri children. Not since Byakuya's grandfather, he considered. It made for an amusing change of pace, and the boy's eager attitude towards magic really had been heartening.
It was such a pain, forcing most of them into the right kind of life. So many ended up being destroyed half by their own reluctance. This boy showed none of that, eyes shining as he devoured anything magic-related he could find. Zouken knew that something had happened during the Grail War to induce this change. That was why he'd ordered Byakuya to keep his child at home instead of sending him out of the country, after all: the hope that some aspect of that great magic ritual would make a failed experiment somewhat useful. If only the child had magic circuits, he would have made for an ideal head of the Matou family, and could have helped immensely with preparations for the next Grail War sixty years hence. Ah, well.
At least it would be amusing watching the boy struggle to attain the impossible. Besides, who knew what the future held? Perhaps Zouken would think of a way to make use of a powerless magic researcher after all.
It was almost a year after that conversation in the study that Zouken decided the time had come to show Shinji the worm room. Shinji had demonstrated a full understanding of the nature of the elements, od, mana, and the basic principles and processes of magecraft, as well as an in-depth grasp of the mysteries that had been present in the books Zouken had him read. Zouken had little doubt that if Shinji had possessed circuits, he would already be animating small familiars and experimenting with some of the Matou's simpler binding curses.
This alone hadn't prompted the decision, though, as Zouken knew from experience that most children just couldn't handle the sight of the worm room. It often left them scarred and unable to pursue their studies properly. Zouken's decision came when he found Shinji dissecting a stray cat in the woods near the manor, trying to determine whether the flow of its od could be discerned from its musculature. Zouken had informed him that it could not, and warned him to refrain from such actions in the future as they would yield no information not found in his books.
Still, the action had been touching. While most families would have recognized the signs of a budding psychopath, Zouken regarded this as an indicator of a clear and inquisitive mind, untroubled by the pain of others. The mind of a magus, in other words. It really was such a shame the boy had no actual capability. He would have made a marvelous pawn.
In any case, if Shinji was capable of killing and taking apart neighborhood pets he was ready for the worm room. That much was plain to Zouken.
Shinji really did feel bad about the cat. Its mewling had been so pathetic, and even when it scratched and bit at him he couldn't really blame it. He was trying to kill it after all. He'd tried to make sure it died quickly and painlessly, though. He hadn't really wanted to kill it, anyway, but there had been a diagram in one of the books on ether interacting with biology, and they'd had such a fine diagram of the way od helped a cat move its muscles. He just had to see if it was really visible. He had to learn.
If anyone in Shinji's family had made an attempt to teach him morality, he might have felt a bit more regret, but as things stood "conscience" was a meaningless term for Shinji. He really did feel bad about how the cat had hurt, though. Remembering the sounds it made was just beginning to bring the first tears to Shinji's eyes when his grandfather came into the study.
Shinji's thoughts of his failed experiment were washed away when Zouken told him that there was another, even more secret part of the house where the Matou family magic was really performed. Shinji could hardly contain his excitement. All the wonderful things that had been in the study, and there was another part of the manor concealing even greater secrets? It was like being told Santa was real, and then invited into his workshop. Or, it would have been if the Matou family celebrated Christmas, anyway.
Shinji happily followed his grandfather out of the study and down the hall. As he descended the stairs into the basement, though, he began to have his first misgivings. The sound of insects was louder here than anywhere else, and the air was cold and clammy. The steps were cut from the raw stone that had been below the earth here long before the Matou manor, and as it came into view the architecture of the room was no more civilized.
Shinji found himself standing on a sort of balcony, stretching around the room above a great pit into which the stairs descended. The walls were covered with carefully carved holes, which appeared to serve as nests for strange animals, if the slime around their edges was anything to go by.
Far more horrible than the design of the room, already so repellently alien to the rest of the house, was its contents. In the center of the great pit was a pedestal, and lying on it empty-eyed and motionless was Sakura.
Only her face was completely visible, as the rest of her body was covered by the swarming worms that filled the pit. They churned in their mass and crept disgustingly over Sakura's defenseless form. As Shinji watched they stained her unspeakably. There she was, his cute new sister; the sister who was his responsibility as the eldest child; the sister who he had promised to save and care for.
Shinji saw red, and as the geas flared Zouken had to restrain the child by force from leaping into the worm pit. Shinji seemed to have undergone a complete change, screaming and shouting about the horror, the injustice of what Zouken was doing to Sakura. Seeing that he was unlikely to calm soon, Zouken pulled Shinji from the worm room and began educating his grandson in the facts of life as a Matou. This education was performed primarily with his cane.
Shinji's introduction to the worm room marked two changes in the course of his life. First, he would not succeed the Matou magic. After all, if the Matou magic made Sakura go through that terrible time in the basement, and did those terrible things to Uncle Kariya, it certainly couldn't be any good for him.
Shinji had learned from his books that every family of magi did things differently. So, with all the confidence of any child, he simply decided that he would learn the magic of another family. He would also avoid all live subjects in his studies going forward; there would be no more dissected cats.
The second major change that came to Shinji was in his attitude towards Sakura. He had been rather vague in this regard before. Of course he wanted to save her, but he didn't know from what, or how. Of course he wanted to take care of her, but in the Matou family that didn't mean much.
In fact, Shinji's definition of "taking care" of someone mostly included petty bullying. He thought of it as a kind of show of affection, showing her he noticed she was around and making sure she noticed him.
This changed after the worm room. Suddenly he knew exactly what he needed to save her from. It was those worms, and the way they made her make the same kind of dead face Grandfather sometimes made.
After that, whenever Sakura finished in the worm room Shinji would go to her and comfort her. He would bring her up to the study, where he'd learned to get a fire going in the fireplace, and sit with her. He'd read her fairy tales, and give her candy, and just hold her, until finally her expression would crack and she would start to cry into Shinji's shirt, from huge, wracking sobs down to muted whimpers. Eventually Sakura would get herself under control, thank him, and go out of the study to get something to eat and go to sleep in her own room.
Shinji always felt like a failure after these sessions. He could get her to stop looking dead, and he knew that was good, because none of the other little girls at school looked like that. He could never make her laugh, though, or get her to enjoy the stories like he had when he'd first read them.
It didn't matter. Shinji now had an idea of what he needed to do to save Sakura, and somehow that mattered just as much to him as learning magic.
Over time, Shinji tried other things besides just comforting Sakura after her time in the worm room. He would surprise her with candy when he came home from school, or show her a beautiful new flower he'd found in the forest, or just help with the chores.
Gradually, Sakura's façade began to fade, and by the time Shinji was ten her eyes began to light up whenever he was around. It was a long way from a real smile, but it was a start.
Matou Shinji was 11 years old today. He was also in excruciating, soul-wrenching pain. Those were the two thoughts chasing each other around his brain as he mentally chanted, I'm older now, I can't cry out, I'm older now, I can't cry out, can't disappoint Grandfather, I won't be a failure, because I won't cry out, because I'm older and so on in that manner. Shinji was undergoing an experimental type of spiritual surgery. He was on the altar in the worm room, naked, with his soul flayed open and exposed to the air. More importantly, it was exposed to the ministrations of a spiritual surgeon, whose deft fingers seemed intent on wringing as much suffering as possible out of Shinji. The one positive aspect of the experience was that the room was temporarily free of worms, as they played no part in this ritual.
A few months earlier, Shinji had been reading a book on the enhancement of the body via the empowerment on the soul, which his grandfather had written, when he'd come across one of Zouken's early cast-off ideas. The concept was that it should be theoretically possible to surgically transplant magic circuits in the same way that a magic crest was transplanted from father to son, thereby enhancing the ability of a family of magi to compound their power over the generations. It had numerous flaws, of course, which was why it occupied the back half of a chapter on hypothetical spiritual enhancements rather than being the gold standard in inheritance practices for magi of prestigious lineages.
The first flaw was that it was incredibly unreliable. Whereas a magic crest was from its inception an artificial alteration to the soul, and somewhat more durable than the natural soul, magic circuits were totally biological. It would take an incredibly talented spiritual surgeon to even extract the circuits without destroying them. For this same reason, the transplant process would be similarly unreliable, with the recipient's own magic circuits likely to reject and conflict with the new circuits. It would require someone with phenomenal compatibility as well as some way of temporarily suppressing their own magic circuits to act as the recipient.
The second flaw was in the people who would be undergoing the procedure. It was one thing to transplant a magic crest, something that could persist for centuries after the death of its host, to an heir. One would still have the crest during one's own entire life. Magic circuits, on the other hand, would need to be transplanted from either a living donor or a carefully preserved and relatively fresh corpse. No magus would willingly part with the totality of their own power in order to enhance their heir, no matter how family-minded the magus might be.
Between the two flaws, the concept had been forgotten and buried. For Shinji, though, it was perfect. He had brought it to his grandfather straight away. Zouken, who just so happened to have a preserved corpse and a living donor at his disposal, was more than a little intrigued at the idea of giving a new experiment to one of his old hypotheses, and anything that had a chance of making Shinji a more useful pawn was desirable. Zouken calmed the excited boy and went to call an old acquaintance.
Vasily Petrovich Teplov got into Fuyuki about a month after a hurried telephone conversation with Matou Zouken, regarding a procedure that really shouldn't be possible. The Teplovs were a minor house of magi, but one with deep roots in Russia. They had been vassals to the Zolgen clan centuries ago, and had kept up a working relationship with the family when they changed their name to Makiri, and again to Matou.
This wasn't out of the Teplov's ancient feudal loyalty. Rather, it was because the Teplov family was a line of spiritual surgeons, for whom biotic manipulation specialists like the Matou were the perfect research partners. If all went well, this next experiment would demonstrate the efficacy of that partnership beyond any doubt. Besides that, Zouken liked having a reliable family of magi contacts in his homeland, and the Teplov family heads over the years had all liked the fact that the Matou always had plenty of money, even when the Teplov were living hand-to-mouth. A rich patron goes a long way in any era.
It had been just the kind of season that made Vasily glad his ancestors had kept in touch with the elder magus. Customers had been brutally thin on the ground of late, and those he could find kept telling him he was charging too much. Vasily wouldn't mind their protestations if they could pay, but too often he found out after the fact that his patients were just as short on cash as he was. Frankly, Vasily was a far better surgeon than he was a businessman, and things had just been getting worse and worse since his father had died and left the practice to him.
That was one reason why Vasily had responded to Zouken's call by clearing his (already empty) schedule and heading to Japan as soon as he could prepare the components for a small portable surgical workshop. The second reason was the subject of that call. Transference of magic circuits by spiritual surgery was completely unheard of. To Vasily's knowledge, very few magi had ever attempted it and nobody had ever succeeded. The few results he had been able to find ranged from the circuits becoming useless in the new body to gruesome, agonizing death as the magic circuits of the host magus rejected what they saw as invaders via a sort of odic immune system. Even if the operation ended in failure it would be a great learning experience, but Zouken had seemed oddly confident it would actually succeed. If that happened, Vasily would be breaking totally new ground in spiritual surgery, and that was certain to improve his life situation. Hell, if business didn't pick up he could take the technique to the Clock Tower and start living in one of their researcher dorms.
The third reason Vasily had come to Fuyuki was the atmosphere. It might seem trivial, but Vasily lived in a dingy, cramped apartment in the heart of Moscow, and a paid vacation seemed like a wonderful idea. Now, as he waited for his taxi outside the Fuyuki City Station (he'd had to take a train from Narita International Airport, as Fuyuki lacked its own), he definitely appreciated his decision. The warm spring breeze gently swirled the smoke from his cigarette as it sent the petals of scented blossoms from nearby flowering trees dancing through the air, as the sun shone down just warm enough to keep a chill off without making the heat oppressive. Yes, even if the job turned out to be a wash this trip was worth it on its own for the destressing he could do while here.
Then Vasily's taxi pulled up, and he rode off to meet his destiny.
The current head of the Teplovs was a mildly unpleasant man, Zouken mused. The spiritual surgeon was certainly not a tool that married form to function, as he had prepared in the Tohsaka's cast off child. He didn't seem to have shaved in a few weeks, giving him facial hair too long to be stubble and too short for a beard. His hair was in a similar state, a shaggy mass that fell halfway down his neck apparently at random, while the man's consisted of denim jeans, a black jacket made out of some kind of polymer, and a sweat-stained shirt. To top it off, the unmistakable stink of one who chain-smokes the cheapest available cigarettes clung to him as if he'd rubbed it into his skin, like cologne. Zouken was, of course, no great lover of beauty. He'd always looked down on the Tohsaka clan for their obsession with elegance. All the same, the man's singular lack of effort in preparating for his first meeting with the long-term employer of his family was rather offensive.
The two magi sat across from one another at the Matou dining hall. Byakuya, experiencing a rare hour in which he was neither drunk nor hungover, stood behind Zouken as he'd been ordered. The corpse of Matou Kariya, preserved by a mystery of rejuvenation actualized via the crest worms that had infested him in life, lay on the table. He seemed to have expired no more than an hour ago.
"This," Zouken explained, "is the primary donor. It was the subject's uncle, and possesses 34 magic circuits. All should be preserved and functional. The secondary donor, who will supplement the operation if all 34 do not transfer successfully, is behind me there. It has 23 circuits, which it has striven to keep from performing any possibly useful function until today. Let us hope the recipient is more responsible."
At this point Vasily looked up from where he had been tracing the lines of the spirit representing Kariya's magic circuits. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Gospodin Matou, but it seems your preservation is less thorough than you had thought. I've already found five circuits that are decayed beyond any possible usage, and I'm sure there are more. It seems that your secondary donor there will have to provide the bulk of the circuits. What is his relation to the subject?"
Suppressing his irritation at the slight to his preservative abilities, Zouken replied, "That is the boy's father, sad to say. Don't hesitate to extract all of his circuits. As I said, he isn't putting them to any use." Byakuya winced. Leaning over the corpse, which certainly seemed fresh enough, Zouken began using the dormant crest worms to analyze the corpse's circuits as well.
"Are there any usable circuits left, or did they decay on the moment of death?" Zouken was incredulous at that idea. He had theorized that a magus' circuits should remain usable for at least a few hours after his death, and his book had made the rounds at the Association in those days. He knew that a few magi had tried the procedure over the centuries, which meant they must have found something to use in the fresh corpses. He had certainly been quick enough preserving the corpse, beginning the process as soon as the child's back had been turned.
"Actually, it looks like I was wrong," Vasily answered, his brows knitting in intense curiosity. "Only a few of the circuits decayed in the normal way. Most of them look like they were burned out while he was still alive, or damaged by your worms. This guy was certainly pushing himself past his limits. Still, there are ten circuits in usable condition. They have some minor wear and tear, but it's mostly stripped out their individualized characteristics, elemental affinity and so-on. If this guy had lived, it'd be a real blow for him, but it might actually make it easier for the subject's circuits to accept them."
Vasily looked back to Zouken, his analysis of Kariya complete. "What can you tell me about the subject, Gospodin Matou? I'll need to know as much as possible. Number of circuits, individual circuit capacity, elemental affinity, any sorcery traits. Everything you know about his condition as a magus will help me get his soul to accept the new circuits."
Although Zouken remained expressionless, Byakuya could hold back no longer, and let out a guffaw of derision. In a perfectly level tone, Zouken said "You've touched on the reason for my confidence, Teplov. The subject has no magic circuits. With no circuits, he of course has no elemental affinity. The only thing we've been able to determine he does have is his mother's sorcery trait, Inheritor." A smirk began to form on Zouken's withered face. "Perhaps now you have a bit of an idea of why I emphasized what a useless waste his father there is."
Fully in work mode, Vasily let the joke slip by him, giving a somber nod. "Yes, from a medical perspective it is quite disheartening to think your son would be unable to produce an heir with magic circuits. I can see why he was branded a failure, and why you'd turn to such a desperate method."
Vasily hefted his suitcase onto the table, roughly moving Kariya's leg out of the way. "I have everything I need in here. If the boy is ready, I can start the procedure whenever you'd like. Can you show me to the operating room?
That brings us back to Shinji, splayed out on an altar on his eleventh birthday, undergoing the first of two treatments to implant magic circuits into his soul. As the pain gradually began to fade, replaced by a cool haze settling over his mind, he realized the surgeon Grandfather had hired was finished operating, and was now accelerating his healing, a hand pressed to Shinji's forehead. With some irritation, Shinji's suddenly relaxed mind realized that the man had been smoking the entire time. Didn't he know fire wasn't allowed in the worm room?
"You can rest now, kid. We're done for the day." The surgeon flashed him a yellowed smile, and continued, "You're a real trooper, you know. All that and you didn't make a peep."
Too weak to do anything but lie still, Shinji watched as the surgeon's withdrew his head from Shinji's frame of vision. Then he heard the man speaking to his grandfather.
"That was great, Gospodin Matou. Your kid there is perfect material for this kind of procedure; that Inheritor trait is a godsend. There were definitely a few times there when I thought he was going to spasm right into a stroke, when all of a sudden his soul reshaped, actually altering itself to fit the new circuit, and the rejection symptoms faded right out. I told you earlier that there were only ten usable circuits from the first subject, and I expected him to reject most, if not all of them. Every one of those circuits properly meshed with the kid, as clean as if he'd been born with them. Man, after this procedure my whole life is gonna turn around! Forget running that crappy business, it'll be all-expenses-paid research from now on!"
Then, in a calmer tone of voice, "Ahem. Got a bit carried away, 'scuse me. Anyway, at this rate we should be able to implant all 23 circuits from the secondary donor tomorrow. See to it your kid rests until I get back, and call me if any complications show up. I'm heading back to my hotel."
Shinji heard the surgeon's footsteps ringing on stone as he climbed the stairs from the basement. Shortly after, the head of Shinji's grandfather entered his vision. It bore the same malicious smirk it did when he brought Sakura down for her training with the worms. "Well, boy, look at you! Ten whole circuits pried out a dead failure. Perhaps you'll be able to use them to fail me as entertainingly as Kariya did. Now, don't lie there all night. Get on your feet, and Sakura will be down shortly to help you up to your room. Get plenty of rest, boy. Tomorrow's session will be longer, and we can't have you passing out during the operation."
With a dry chuckle, Zouken too receded from Shinji's view, and he could soon hear the old man's cane rapping on the stairs. Shinji honestly did want to simply lie on the slab and drift off, regardless of Grandfather's warnings. He was sure the worms wouldn't hurt him any worse than Sakura, and he was so tired. It was so easy just to lie there, and stare at the ceiling, to let himself relax…
"Nii-san? Grandfather sent me down to get you. You shouldn't sleep there, you know."
Sakura's voice snapped Shinji out of his reverie. What was he doing, drifting off in the worm room? He could already see the horrible things beginning to creep out of their holes, free to do as they pleased now that the procedure was over.
Shinji rolled off the altar, his intended graceful dismount turning into an ungainly collapse as his legs demonstrated the procedure's exertion. Suppressing the shrieking of his abused muscles and forcing a smile to his lips, he turned to his sister. "Sakura, would you mind helping me up? It seems I'm a little tired out."
Taking her proffered hand, (It's so small and cold. A hand that shouldn't carry any burdens, he couldn't help thinking), Shinji pulled himself up. Leaning on her shoulder, hating himself for every gram of extra weight he put on her, he let her lead him up the stairs. Distantly, he realized that his vision was blurring more and more, and a ring of darkness seemed to be closing in around the edges.
"Nii-san, did the operation go well? Grandfather said he was doing something that'd make it so you could help me with," Sakura hesitated, looking for the words, "my… duties as a Matou." Resigned to her fate as she tried to be, and despite her giving nature, Sakura couldn't keep the note of pleading from her voice.
Feeling like he was moving through deep water, Shinji moved to stroke his sister's hair. Such beautiful hair, he mused, like lavender. Sweet, calming, comforting and so delicate. You wouldn't think such ugly magic could make something so lovely. The surgeon's narcotic spell was distracting him, Shinji realized, and Sakura was waiting for him to answer. "It worked," he said with surprising effort. Shinji's throat seemed to be trying just as hard as the rest of his body to shut down and sleep. "Don't worry, Sakura. I'll make sure you never have to go back there again. Just you wait, I'll make it all better. I promise."
Then they were at his bed, the trip through the long halls and stairways of the Matou manor having slipped by Shinji in his haze. Sakura was saying something to him, but he couldn't make it out as the sweet darkness of rest closed in.
When he woke up, Shinji would curse himself for making Sakura a promise he couldn't keep, giving her one more piece of false hope. No doubt it had been just what Zouken wanted from him.
The second operation didn't go as well as the first. That would be how Vasily would have expressed the outcome to his employer, if the creepy old bastard hadn't been watching the whole thing. Free from any need for diplomacy in the privacy of his own mind, Vasily considered the second operation a grade-A clusterfuck. The boy's father must have hated him with a passion so deep it had sunk right into his soul. Besides that, it seemed like the first donor hated the second just as much. That was the only explanation he had for the way things had gone. Implanting the new circuits had turned the boy's soul into a battleground. The circuits from the first operation rejected the newer circuits and tried to remove them with a vigor that a body part taken from a corpse just shouldn't have. That much Vasily had been prepared for, though, and with help from the Inheritor trait making the boy's soul itself practically an active participant in the surgery he'd been able to overcome that rejection.
Where things had really gone crazy had been when the new circuits rejected the boy. That was completelyunheard of and totally unexpected. But then, Vasily mused, that's what you get when you perform experimental new operations. The boy's trait had tried to fight the reaction, but the first eight circuits had burnt themselves out trying to kill him before it could fully adapt. In the process they had bleached the color out of his hair and done something strange to his eyes, turning them from dark blue-grey to an almost colorless blue-white, like chips of ice. The boy's soft tissue had also been severely weakened, the od meant to keep his body working properly having been drained by the aggressive circuits. He would heal to a certain degree, and his vision wasn't actually impaired, but he'd never be as strong or as tough as he could have been if he hadn't gone under the knife. Besides all that, the kid had almost bit his tongue off trying not to scream, and needing to restrain him had done nothing to ease the procedure for Vasily.
If the first ten circuits from the second donor had all reacted so violently, Vasily would have abandoned the operation as a lost cause, ruined by whatever poison the second donor had put into his circuits. On the ninth transplant, however, something shocking happened. The boy stabilized, accepting the circuit with greater difficulty than those of the first donor, but accepting it all the same. On further analysis, Vasily discovered that the Inheritor sorcery had been driving the soul to adapt to the violent circuit faster and faster on each of the first eight, and had finally managed now to take one into itself properly. This process continued for the remaining fourteen transplants, and the last circuit was taken into the subject almost as easily as the first donor's circuits had been. In the end, Vasily had successfully transplanted twenty-five magic circuits into a non-magus. If he could replicate the procedure on a subject without the Inheritor sorcery trait he really would be set for life.
Whatever the future might hold, Vasily's work in Fuyuki was done. All he had to do now was leave the boy's aftercare instructions with Zouken, pick up his payment, and enjoy his two-week all-expense-paid Japanese vacation!
Shinji slept for three days after the second operation. It was a face that he was first made aware of as he awoke, discovering that Sakura was shaking him and crying into his chest, telling him not to leave her all alone. He reached out and began stroking her hair, as he always did when she sat with him and cried after her "training" sessions in the worm room.
Shinji put on his best comforting tone and tried to minimize the situation, saying "Hey now, I was just asleep for a little while. That operation was tough, you know?" This turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to say, as Sakura turned tear-rimmed eyes to meet his gaze with more anger than he'd ever seen her show before.
"Nii-san, you idiot! It wasn't just a little while! You were sleeping in here for three days! You can't promise to help me, and then get all hurt like Uncle Kariya, and then… and then…" Dissolving into sobs, Sakura fled the room.
As he listened to the door slam, followed by the sounds of his sister's small feet running down the hall, Shinji pondered on how he might have handled that situation better. When no ideas came to mind, he resolved to get out of bed and figure out why he'd been asleep for so long. Suddenly one phrase sank in, and Shinji stopped cold. "Like Uncle Kariya," she'd said. What had happened to him? He raced over to the closet and pulled it open, revealing the full-length mirror on the door.
Shinji stared in shock at his new self. He wasn't just like his uncle. All of his limbs still worked, no worms writhed beneath his skin, and he wasn't covered in blood. Still, the resistance was unsettling. He had visibly thinned during or after the surgery, discarding his baby fat and giving his face, hands, and other visible skin the kind of sharp, thin outlines that would normally be seen only on a teenager in the middle of dieting. His hair was completely white, a mess of waves so pearlescent that he reached up and touched it, almost fearing it had really been covered by ice. Most disturbing of all were his eyes. They hadn't just gone pale, they seemed to reflect more light. There was an unnatural blue-white gleam there that somehow brought Shinji a mental image of something that had fated under intense light – definition and clear imagery all washed away, only leaving that gleam.
Shinji tried to concentrate on his reflection's eyes, seeing if he could work out what seemed so wrong about them. Then suddenly more of the icy color came into view. He could, when he focused, see it running through him, like light under his skin. It traveled down his arms to his fingertips, and up his neck and head to his eyes. It hit him in a flash that he was detecting magical energy for the first time in his life. This was his od, flowing through his new magic circuits. That was a delight that drew all attention from his new appearance, as his mind suddenly began to race with all the ways he could expand his knowledge.
Shinji, Zouken decided, would do for a Matou heir if he should need to expend the material he'd received from Tohsaka. He had more circuits than Byakuya and more motivation than either of the previous generation of Matous. It was uncertain whether or not he could pass on the transplanted circuits to a child, of course, but Zouken imagined the Inheritor sorcery trait would aid in that regard. It seemed that the failure in Byakuya's marriage had not been Vesna after all, but Byakuya himself.
Zouken wouldn't train the boy in magic himself, of course. He had too much else to do in preparation for the next grail war, and too much time had to be spent on training the girl. Still, something had to be done. It had been one thing to let the child study the Matou grimoires alone with minimal guidance, but now that he had magic circuits Shinji would need a guide in regards to magic. Who could Zouken call on to raise his artificial novice?
It hit him in a flash. He had the perfect candidates to turn his potential tool into a real puppet, and he could call them up from the same place as Teplov. He would send the boy to study with his mother's family, the Prozorovsky lineage. A year or two there training his acclimation with the newly implanted circuits and Shinji would be perfectly capable of continuing his own independent studies by age 13. A few hours after the end of the second implant operation, Zouken sent one of his familiars with a message. He would have called, but the Prozorovskys eschewed anything as modern as a telephone.
Three days later, when Sakura came running down the stairs crying and muttering something along the lines of "stupid mean Nii-san," Zouken decided that Shinji must have finally recovered enough from the operation to wake up. Good, he thought, He's rested long enough. Time to tell him about his new home.